Going off statins risky for heart patients

Patients who stop taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs after suffering a heart attack have double the risk of dying during the following year compared with patients who have never used statins. To find out mortality indicators among heart attack patients, researchers from Britain studied 9,939 patients who survived an acute heart attack and were still alive 3 months later. The patients were asked about their statin use before and after the heart attack. It was found that those who discontinued their statin medication were 88 percent more likely to die during the following year compared to those who had never been on the medication. Further, patients who used statins before the heart attack and continued to take them afterwards were 16 percent less likely to die over the next year than those who had never used them.The above findings show that though statins are preventive medicines, it is potentially harmful to stop taking them after a heart attack. The researchers recommended heart patients to continue statin therapy even after the surviving heart attacks.

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