Are Statins Right for You?

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Many questions remain unanswered. Researchers have shown, for example, that taking an aspirin a day can reduce a heart patient's risk of suffering a heart attack. Would combining aspirin with a statin have a synergistic effect, or is one better than the other in preventing heart disease? Similarly, many cardiologists are impressed by the ability of another group of drugs, called ACE inhibitors, to normalize high blood pressure and reduce the strain on the heart. Would they work better alone or in combination with other drugs?

Dr. Sidney Smith, director of the center for cardiovascular disease at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, predicts that doctors will be much more aggressive in their use of such preventive strategies in the next year or two. "Statins are one therapy; ACE inhibitors are another," he says. "There are pretty powerful data that medical therapy can arrest the progression of coronary disease and atherosclerosis and cut down on cardiac events." As always, the art of medicine is in taking that information and figuring out who will benefit most.

--Reported by Alice Park/New York