New drugs 'can reduce heart attacks by a third'

Revolutionary drugs that lower cholesterol in the bloodstream can prevent a third of heart attacks and strokes and should be prescribed to two million more people, scientists report today.

Revolutionary drugs that lower cholesterol in the bloodstream can prevent a third of heart attacks and strokes and should be prescribed to two million more people, scientists report today.

Statins, which cost only £1-a-day to administer and have been described as the "new aspirin", are usually given only to people who have heart disease and raised cholesterol.

But a study published in The Lancet shows that a much wider range of patients could benefit, including anyone with diabetes aged over 40, those with narrowing of the arteries in the leg, and anyone who has had a minor stroke.

About one million people in Britain, or one in 20 of the population aged over 40, are currently treated with statins, which work on an enzyme in the liver to reduce the amount of cholesterol deposited in the arteries. But the researchers say doctors should immediately extend the treatment to three times as many people. If three million people were on the drugs, 10,000 lives a year would be saved.

The drugs work just as well in women as in men and are as effective at lowering cholesterol in the over-seventies as those in middle age. Patients who are considered to have low or normal cholesterol levels also benefit, and the positive effects increase the longer patients take the drugs.

More than 20,000 patients aged between 40 and 80 and diagnosed with coronary disease, arterial narrowing or diabetes were recruited for the study from 69 hospitals. Volunteers took either one 40mg tablet of statins every day for five years or a placebo.

Professor Rory Collins, who led the research at Oxford University, said: "This shows unequivocally that statins can produce substantial benefit in a very much wider range of high-risk people than had been thought."

Professor Sir Charles George, medical director of the British Heart Foundation, called for an urgent review of national guidelines on statins so that more patients were prescribed them. He added: "These are some of the most convincing results I have ever seen from a clinical trial."

But people who take vitamin tablets to protect themselves against serious diseases are "wasting their money", scientists conclude in the same report.

Vitamins E, C, and beta-carotene, which is essential for manufacturing vitamin A, do not reduce the risk of heart attacks, strokes or cancers, or help to prevent conditions such as osteoporosis and cataracts.

Professor Collins said: "A lot of people are attracted by vitamins because they seem to be a nice, easy way to protect yourself against heart disease or cancer. But we found no effect whatsoever.

"It is a waste of money. In America it is said that they have the richest urine in the world because so many vitamins are taken and then peed out."

In a parallel study to the statins investigation, some patients took capsules containing vitamin C, beta carotene and vitamin E, while others took no vitamin supplements.

Dr Jane Armitage, clinical co-ordinator of the study, said there was "enormous optimism" at the start of the project that a combination of the three vitamins would be beneficial. But the study found no significant reductions in the five-year risk of heart attacks, strokes or cancers, or any other important benefits.

The scientists said it was possible that vitamin supplements might show an effect over a longer period than five years. They also urged people not to stop eating fruit and vegetables, because natural vitamins could be doing good in different ways.