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[bob ford <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>]

If anyone else is in high risk for stroke or heart-attack, or according to 
this article, if you think you are no;, and if your cholestorol is good. this 
is a good  preventitive blood test.   
And, before you say it is just a drug company push, it is a $20 test, and 
statins are generic, now. .......bobford

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Study: Blood Test Can Spot Risks for Heart Attack, Stroke
Blood Draw, Combined With Widely-Used Drug Could Be a Big Step in Prevention

  
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer 
Sunday, November 9, 2008; 9:02 AM 

A highly anticipated study has produced powerful evidence that a simple blood 
test can spot seemingly healthy people who are at increased risk for a heart 
attack or stroke and that giving them a widely used drug offers potent 
protection against the nation's leading killers. 


In findings that could transform efforts to prevent cardiovascular disease, 
the study of nearly 18,000 volunteers in 26 countries found that a 
cholesterol-lowering statin slashed the risk of those flagged by the test by 
about half -- even if their cholesterol was normal. 

"The potential public health benefits are huge," said Paul M. Ridker of the 
Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, who presented the findings today at a 
meeting of the American Heart Association in New Orleans. "It really changes 
the way we have to think about prevention of heart attack and stroke." 

The test measures a bodily reaction known as inflammation, reinforcing an 
increasingly accepted theory about the underlying biology of heart disease, 
which kills about 450,000 Americans each year. 


"It's a breakthrough study," said Steven E. Nissen of the Cleveland Clinic, 
who was not involved in the research. "It's a blockbuster. It's absolutely 
paradigm-shifting." 

Several leading authorities predicted the findings would prompt many doctors 
to start routinely screening middle-aged patients for inflammation with the 
$20 test and begin prescribing the statin used in the study, or one of the 
less expensive generic versions, to those who get worrisome results. All such 
drugs reduce inflammation. 

"This takes prevention to a whole new level," said W. Douglas Weaver, 
president of the American College of Cardiology. "Yesterday you would not 
have used a statin for a patient whose cholesterol was normal. Today you 
will." 

Some experts, however, worried about rushing millions of healthy people onto 
powerful drugs. 

"This would be a huge expansion of the boundaries of drug therapy," said Mark 
A. Hlatky of Stanford University, who wrote an editorial that will accompany 
a paper describing the findings in the New England Journal of Medicine. "I 
think we need to be careful before we radically change what we do. Nothing is 
risk-free." 

The traditional model for how heart attacks and strokes occur is that high 
cholesterol causes fatty buildups to slowly accumulate inside arteries 
supplying blood to the heart and brain, but about half of all heart attacks 
and strokes occur in people whose cholesterol is normal. That has raised 
questions about what other factors may be involved and how more deaths could 
be prevented. 

"This has been the puzzle," Ridker said. "How do we identify these people and 
prevent disease in these folks?" 

Evidence has been building that inflammation, part of the body's defense 
against infection and injuries, may play a crucial role by causing the most 
vulnerable plaques inside arteries to rupture, triggering blood clots that 
finally block blood flow. The blood test detects inflammation by measuring a 
substance in the blood called C-reactive protein (CRP), which statins drive 
down. But it has remained far from clear how important or useful that 
information was. 

In 2003, Ridker and his colleagues started prescribing either 20 milligrams 
of the statin Crestor or an inert placebo daily to 17,802 middle-aged and 
elderly men and women who had what are considered safe cholesterol levels but 
high CRP -- 2 milligrams per liter of blood or above. 

The researchers planned to follow the subjects for five years, but an 
independent panel monitoring the study stopped the trial in March after an 
average follow-up of less than two years, concluding that the benefit was so 
striking that it would unethical to continue withholding the real drug from 
those taking the placebo. But no details were released at the time. 

Compared with those getting the placebo, those taking Crestor were 54 percent 
less likely to have a heart attack, 48 percent less to have a stroke, 46 
percent less likely to need angioplasty or bypass surgery to open a clogged 
artery, 44 percent less likely to suffer any of those events and 20 percent 
less likely to die from any cause, the researchers reported yesterday. 

"We were both shocked and elated," Ridker said. 

The numbers were relatively small -- for example, 31 heart attacks in the 
statin group versus 68 in the placebo group, reducing the rate from .37 to 
.17 per 100 person years (or 100 people living one year). But the relative 
reduction in risk was about double that seen in any previous study evaluating 
a statin, which are among the most widely prescribed medications. The data 
are also the first to offer clear evidence of a benefit for women and 
minorities as well as men. 

"These are very, very dramatic findings," said Elizabeth G. Nabel, director 
of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, noting that two other 
studies presented at the meeting support the value of CRP testing. 

Experts will review the data before deciding how to revise federal guidelines 
on CRP testing and statin treatment, Nabel said. But she and others said the 
results will likely have a significant impact on how doctors try to prevent 
heart disease. 

"This really validates inflammation as being an important factor in the 
development and progression of heart disease, and that treating inflammation, 
even in the setting of a normal cholesterol level, may be very important for 
certain individuals," Nabel said. 

While some of the study subjects had risk factors for heart disease, such as 
being overweight or having high blood pressure, the findings held true even 
for those who had no known risks other than their high CRP levels. 

"This changes medical practice in a major way," Nissen said. "People are 
going to flock to their doctors to get their CRP measured, and if it's 
elevated they will say, 'Here's this drug you can take,' We'll save many 
lives and a lot of money." 

Ridker said that one of his colleagues predicted that an estimated 250,000 
heart attacks, strokes, angioplasties or deaths from heart attacks could be 
prevented in the United State alone over five years. 

Although there has been concern about the safety of Crestor, the researchers 
found no signs of significant risks. The study was funded by AstraZeneca, 
which makes Crestor, but the company had no influence over the analysis, 
Ridker said. He and his hospital receive royalties from the high-sensitivity 
CRP (hsCRP) test, but other researchers said that was no reason to doubt the 
findings. 

It remains unproven that other statins would produce similar benefits, but 
other statins also reduce CRP and experts said it was likely that they would 
be beneficial, though the magnitude of the benefit may be smaller. 

Some skeptics, however, argued that the actual risk reduction for an 
individual would be very small, given the relatively low risk for most 
middle-aged people, so the benefits easily could be outweighed by the costs 
of thousands more people taking tests and drugs and being monitored by 
doctors. 

"We're already struggling to provide health services for the 46 million 
Americans who don't have health insurance in the United States," said John 
Abramson, a clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School. "This is going to 
drain away a lot of money from the system for little or no benefit. We know 
that there are lifestyle interventions that are effective." 

Ridker and others, however, said that the benefit was clear. 

"We could prevent a lot of heart attacks, stroke, bypass surgeries, 
angioplasties and save a lot of lives," Ridker said. "To me that's a good 
thing." 




http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/09/AR2008110900852.html?hpid=topnews