A half a million danes take it everyday.
the Drug is a statin used to treat high cholesterol and is one of the most widely used preparations in Denmark. But for years, there has been uncertainty about whether the pills increase the risk of a bleeding in the brain.
This fear is in a new, comprehensive study done to shame. In turn, protects the statin actually against stroke.
It is researchers from Aarhus University, who has examined the context.
– We hope to be able to send a signal to doctors that they should not be reluctant to prescribe a statin to patients who have not been affected by the stroke, says doctor and researcher Anette Riisgaard Ribe from the Research unit for General Practice at Aarhus University.
the Drug has often been debated among professionals. Especially were the doctors concerned in order to print the prescriptions, according to a study in 2006 showed that statin was associated with an increased risk of bleeding in the brain.
But then, it examined patients who had previously been affected by the stroke. The new study followed people who has never had bleeding in the brain.
the Researchers have followed 520.000 danes, who began to take the statin in the period from 2004 to 2014 and have compared them with a control group that has not been treated with the medicine.
Overall, they indicate the study that the risk of getting a stroke is 22 to 35 percent lower for users of statin compared with non-users.
Practicing physician and president of Doctors pharmaceutical committee Tue Flindt Müller welcomes to the studio removes the last doubt about the correlation between statin and stroke.
the Study is important – even if the doctors, in his opinion, no longer afraid to use the preparation.
– The types of patients who get stroke are typically the people with high blood pressure, diabetes and the like. Here they have already reached to a realization that the benefits of treatment with statin outweigh the disadvantages of the preparation. This is why so many people get it, he says.
