During the first discovery, the doctors have been using statins to lower down the level of cholesterol in the human body, large study says. In this study, doctor and heart patients in Singapore participated and showed that a similar type of drug can help in protecting people from strokes and heart attacks.
The benefits of Vytorin – which is an active ingredient is made up in one of plants in Tuas and distributed for further use across the globe has the capacity to help millions of people who are at high risk of heart attacks who cannot tolerate the dosage of statins or do not respond to them sufficiently, according to a New York Times report on these findings.
Some people even argued that statins reduced heart-attack risk not just by lowering the low-density lipoprotein (LDL) levels – the dangerous form of cholesterol – but also by reducing inflammation. The new study indicated that the crucial factor amongst everything is LDL, and the lower, the better.
The six-year study involved around 18,000 people who had heart attacks or episodes of chest pain so severe that they were hospitalized due to it. They were assigned randomly to take a statin or a combination of a statin and the alternative drug to further reduce the LDL levels.
Both the groups ended up having a very low LDL levels – those who took statin, simvastatin, had an average LDL of 69, and those who took simvastatin and the other drug, ezetimibe, or Zetia, in a combination pill sold as Vytorin, had an average LDL of 54.
The target was to help people with multiple risk factors and a previous heart attack is decreasing LDL levels up to 80, and they succeeded in it.