Heart Attack Patients Who Stop Taking Statins Are
More Likely to Die Within a Year
Those who used statins before an AMI and continued
were 16% less likely to die over the next year than those who never
used them
Aug. 27, 2008 The statin you were taking did not
prevent you from having a heart attack so why continue taking it? For
one reason, say researchers, if you discontinue the drug after your
acute myocardial infarction (AMI) you will greatly increase the chance
that you will die within a year.
The study by researchers at McGill University and
the McGill University Health Centre was published in the European Heart
Journal.
Using data on British patients who survived an AMI
and were still alive three months later, Dr. Stella Daskalopoulou and
colleagues found that those who discontinued their statin medication
were 88% more likely to die during the following year compared to those
who had never been on the medication.
"Statins were found to be beneficial drugs," said
Dr. Daskalopoulou, of McGill's Faculty of Medicine and the Department of
Medicine and the Division of Clinical Epidemiology at the MUHC.
"Patients who used statins before an AMI and
continued to take them after were 16% less likely to die over the next
year than those who never used them. So even if it appears that the
statins failed to prevent your AMI, it is beneficial to continue taking
them and potentially quite harmful to stop."
The large, population-based cohort study was
conducted using UK data to take advantage of the medical records kept in
the General Practice Research Database (GPRD), which collects
information on the health of more than three million patients across the
UK.
"In the general population the statin
discontinuation rate within the first year of prescription is 30
percent. That's very high," Dr. Daskalopoulou continued.
"Because statins are preventative drugs, patients
may not feel the immediate benefit of taking them and sometimes stop.
However, it looks like this might be quite a dangerous practice after an
AMI."
The harmful effects of statin discontinuation may
be the result of many different mechanisms, including individual patient
characteristics, the researchers explained.
"Regardless of the mechanism or explanation,
physicians should be careful when assessing each patient's medication
needs," Dr. Daskalopoulou said. "Patients also need to take their
medications exactly as prescribed after an AMI. Statins in particular
should only be withdrawn after an AMI under close clinical supervision."
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