Effects of lipid lowering therapy on progression of coronary and carotid artery disease

Three-Year Follow-up Results of Angiographic Intervention Trial Using an HMG-CoA Reductase Inhibitor to Evaluate Retardation of Obstructive Multiple Atheroma (ATHEROMA) Study

“…Higher annual treatment effects of 0.03-0.04 mm/year obtained in previous angiographic studies (Fig 3) 39 were probably related to the much more marked progression in focal atheroma seen in the control groups of those studies. It is important to note that despite such a small progression in the non-drug group, significant suppression of ATHEROMA progression was observed in the current study in patients treated with pravastatin.…”

Effect of Rosuvastatin Therapy on Coronary Artery Stenoses Assessed by Quantitative Coronary Angiography

“…The clinical significance of regression of CAD as measured by QCA has not been well studied; although previous QCA trials with statins consistently showed fewer patients with progression and more patients with regression than placebo, on average, patients continued to have progression of atherosclerosis in all the multicenter trials with statin monotherapy. 13 Perhaps the most important finding in this trial is that aggressive lipid-modifying therapy arrested progression or stabilized coronary stenoses during the 2 years of the study, as evidenced by the fact that 97% of patients remained stable or had regression in terms of percent diameter stenosis and that 94% of patients remained stable or had regression in terms of MLD (Table 4). Plaque stabilization may be more important than gross anatomic changes as a mechanism for the clinical benefits of statin therapy on CAD event reduction observed in clinical trials.…”

“…Least-squares linear regression analysis was applied to the mean QCA results for multiple trials, weighted by the number of patients in each arm, similar to that performed previously. 13 The authors had full access to and take full responsibility for the integrity of the data. All authors have read and agree to the manuscript as written.…”

Myriocin slows the progression of established atherosclerotic lesions in apolipoprotein E gene knockout mice

“…Hypercholesterolemia is a major risk factor for atherosclerosis, and it is clear that HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors (statins) effectively decrease serum total cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol and reduce cardiovascular morbidity and mortality (32). However, it is known that a significant number of patients are either resistant to or intolerant of statins, and with recent guidelines for LDL-cholesterol levels to be reduced to ,2 mM, it has been reported that ,50% of patients treated with statins achieve their targets (33).…”