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Updated: Aug 24, 2026

Differential Effects of Lipid-lowering Drugs in Modulating Morphology of Cholesterol Particles
Published on: November 10, 2017
Statins and secondary prevention of coronary heart disease
Mehboub Ahmed1, Peter Griffiths
1mehboub.ahmed@kcl.ac.uk
Abstract:
A mini-review (Griffiths, 2002) of double-blind randomized controlled trials (RCTs) was undertaken to assess the long-term effect of lipid lowering treatments (statins versus placebo) in secondary prevention of myocardial infarction (MI). The population sample was adult patients with a history of MI, documented coronary heart disease or coronary artery disease. The Cochrane Library and the database Medline were searched and three RCTs appeared to possess all of the stipulated inclusion and exclusion criteria. The trials all compared statins against a placebo; one trial was of simvastatin--the Scandinavian Simvastatin Survival Study (1994)--and the other two were of pravastatin--the Cholesterol and Recurrent Events Trial (CARE) (Sacks et al, 1996) and Long Term Intervention with Pravastatin Ischaemic Disease (LIPID) (Anon, 1998). The trials demonstrated that statins had a clear and consistent effect in significantly reducing the risk of MI. Overall an approximate decline of 30% in MI was produced from the three trials.
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