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| |  ACC: Statin Treatment Lowers Risk Level of Patients With Multivessel Disease By Ed Susman CHICAGO, IL -- March 31, 2003 -- Patients with heart disease who have multivessel disease can reduce their risk of further heart-related events if they are treated with statin therapy following angioplasty. "We know that multivessel disease is a bad thing," said Dr. Pedro Lemos, a research fellow in cardiology at the Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. "We now know from this study that if you treat these patients with fluvastatin, they will reach a new risk level." Dr. Lemos reviewed data from the Lescol Intervention Prevention Study (LIPS), which found a significant reduction in suffering major acute cardiac events if patients took fluvastatin following percutaneous interventions. "The patients in this study represent real-life characteristics," Dr. Lemos said in his poster presentation on Sunday at the 52nd Annual Scientific Sessions of the American College of Cardiology. In scrutinizing outcomes on the basis of the extent of coronary disease, Dr. Lemos and colleagues noted that after 4 years, 33.9% of patients with multivessel disease who were in the placebo arm of the LIPS trial had suffered a major acute coronary event -- defined as cardiac death, heart attack, or the need for revascularization. However, patients with multivessel disease who were on fluvastatin therapy had about a 23% risk of experiencing a study endpoint event. That reached significance at the P=0.008 level. This was not statistically different from the risk level seen among those with single-vessel disease in the placebo arm -- 22.7% of whom had major acute coronary events -- and among patients with single-vessel disease in the fluvastatin arm (20.5%). In the study, 322 patients with multivessel coronary disease were assigned to fluvastatin, 292 patients with multivessel disease were randomized to placebo, 522 patients with single-vessel disease were on fluvastatin, and 541 patients with single-vessel disease were on placebo. Overall, patients on fluvastatin achieved about a 32% reduction in low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol. Dr. Lemos' study was supported by Novaris Pharmaceutical Corporation. Lescol XL is marketed by Reliant Pharmaceuticals, Liberty Corner, New Jersey, through an agreement with Novartis. "Long-term fluvastatin treatment effectively eliminated the negative effect of multivessel disease on long-term clinical outcome, as patients with multivessel disease receiving treatment with fluvastatin presented similar outcomes as patients with single-vessel disease," Dr. Lemos said.
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