Research offers lifeline to heart patients

By KATHERINE HOBY

An Auckland-led medical research team hopes a ground-breaking heart study will prevent 70 crippling strokes a year nationwide.

Professor Harvey White, director of coronary care at Green Lane Hospital, said six years of research had proved that cholesterol-lowering treatments reduced the number of strokes following heart attacks.

He said if prescription restrictions on drugs, such as pravastatin that researchers had been working with, were loosened many lives could be saved.

Professor White, and Dr Neil Anderson, also of Auckland, headed a team of top Australian and New Zealand researchers in the study involving 9000 patients.

The results are contained in the latest edition of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.

The study's initial results - published in 1998 - found that heart-attack sufferers could live longer by taking pravastatin.

Professor White said people who had survived a stroke were more likely to die of a heart attack than from any other cause.

Many lives could be saved if more patients with a history of coronary heart disease were given cholesterol-lowering treatments such as pravastatin.

"For those who have weak hearts, perhaps we can at least save their personalities."

Pravastatin reduced the risk of stroke by 19 per cent in patients surveyed. Up to 70 strokes a year could be avoided with cholesterol-lowering treatments.

Professor White said the latest development was the culmination of almost nine years' work.

"I am tired of seeing dignified, noble people brought down due to a crippling stroke and to think we can help them is immensely exciting," he said.

"The discovery that pravastatin reduces the risk of stroke provides a reason why it should be made more widely available.

"This would not only reduce mortality and morbidity, but would also save the country money in healthcare."

The study's findings would be presented to Pharmac in support of a plea to make pravastatin more readily available.

Heart attack patients have to have a cholesterol level of 5.5 to be prescribed the treatment drug. Those who have not suffered a heart attack have to have a level of nine.

Professor White describes the restrictions as "severe" and would like doctors to be able to prescribe the treatment at lower cholesterol levels.

Professor White said: "These findings have the potential to change the way doctors practise and the way heart attack sufferers live their lives."