Statins may help millions more people: study

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nearly 20 percent more U.S. men over 50 and women over 60 stand to benefit from taking statins, based on the findings of a recent study on the cholesterol-lowering drugs, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

Their research stakes out a potentially expanded market for statins, already the world's top-selling drugs.

The so-called Jupiter study, presented at an American Heart Association meeting in November, showed that AstraZeneca's statin Crestor dramatically cut deaths, heart attacks and strokes in patients who had healthy cholesterol levels but high levels of a protein associated with heart disease.

C-reactive protein is an indicator of arterial inflammation associated with serious heart risks. The study looked at people with high C-reactive protein levels to see if statins would lower heart disease rates.

Current guidelines used by U.S. doctors indicate about 58 percent of men age 50 and older and women 60 and older, or 34 million people, would benefit from taking statins to cut heart attack and stroke risk.

Dr. Erica Spatz of Yale University in Connecticut and colleagues used U.S. government survey data to see how many more people might be helped by statins, also considering C-reactive protein levels.

They said another 19 percent of men and women in those age groups -- 11 million people -- should be taking the drugs.

That means that all told 77 percent of Americans in those age groups or 45 million people should take the pills, the researchers wrote in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.