[Coronary heart disease prevention. Are there differences in cholesterol synthesis inhibitors?]

All statins have been shown to reduce plasma cholesterol concentrations significantly. Cardioprotective effects of these drugs appear to be mainly due to cholesterol lowering. It remains unclear whether pharmacokinetic differences of statins are of clinical relevance. The clinical studies with statins performed on more than 30,000 individuals demonstrate that lipid lowering drug therapy not only reduces cardiovascular complications but also is a safe and well tolerated long-term therapy. However, the majority of patients who should be treated according to appropriate guidelines, still do not receive any cholesterol lowering therapy. Therefore, it is a main goal that at least high-risk patients (e.g. with coronary heart disease or diabetes mellitus type 2) should be treated with statins.