Cardiac Risk Factor
Lipid-Lowering Therapy May Slow Progression of Coronary Calcification
By NEW YORK (Reuters Health)
Aug 7, 2002, 10:06pm

Treating patients who have elevated LDL cholesterol with lipid-lowering drugs may also slow the progression of coronary calcification, German researchers report.
Dr. Stephan Achenbach, from University of Erlangen-N rnberg, and colleagues used electron beam tomography to evaluate 66 patients with coronary calcifications and LDL cholesterol levels >130 mg/dL who had not received lipid-lowering medication.

The researchers repeated the scan after a mean of 14 months, according to their report in the August 27th rapid access issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

After the second scan, the patients were treated with cerivastatin 0.3 mg/day. After 12 months of cerivastatin therapy, LDL cholesterol levels dropped from a mean of 164 mg/dL to 107 mg/dL, Dr. Achenbach's team found. A third scan was performed after 12 months of treatment.

"The median annualized absolute increase in calcified volume was 25 mm without treatment compared with 11 mm during the treatment (p = 0.01)," they report. "The median relative annual increase was 25% without treatment and 8.8% during treatment (p = 0.0001)."

"It is unclear how changes in coronary calcification achieved by lipid-lowering therapy translate to changes in coronary atherosclerotic plaque volume and composition," Dr. Achenbach and colleagues point out.

They add that "quantification of coronary calcification by fast CT technique therefore seems a promising tool for the assessment of coronary atherosclerosis progression, but the relationship between changes in the amount of coronary calcification and changes in overall plaque burden and plaque vulnerability deserves additional investigation."

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