statins

The curiosity of biochemists, mixed with some obvious economic incentives, created a family of powerful cardiovascular drugs In 1966, Akira Endo, a young Japanese biochemist, started an adventure that would ultimately save thousands, if not millions, of lives. Only 33 years old at the time, Endo was a research scientist at Sankyo-a pharmaceutical company, later known as Daiichi Sankyo, in Read more...

Need one more reason to quit smoking, eat right and exercise? How about inflammation? Most people think of inflammation as the redness, swelling and warmth that accompanies a cut, injury or illness. These are symptoms of the body's immune system fighting off what it perceives as an intruder. When that intruder is cholesterol, inflammation can wreak havoc on the cardiovascular system and Read more...

The class of drugs known as "statins" have long been used to lower cholesterol in folks at risk for a heart attack or stroke. They work well, at a reasonable cost, and the side effects are generally well-understood. Now one of the statins, Crestor, has been shown to do something that no other drug has ever done: reverse heart disease. Over a two-year study financed by its Read more...

Not since aspirin has a class of drugs come along that does so much more than originally intended that it could end up being used as a preventive against many major diseases. Statins, which lower cholesterol, have been proved in clinical trials to reduce heart attacks and strokes by 30 percent to 50 percent. They are the most widely prescribed drugs in the United States; one in 10 adults take Read more...

Some drugs that reduce the risk of heart attacks also can cause impotence in men, British researchers say. A study in New Scientist magazine links impotence and drugs that contain statins, commonly prescribed for patients with high cholesterol. Researchers at the University of Wales discovered libido difficulties in some 220 men being treated with this form of medication. Most of the men Read more...

By Kyle Roderick ThirdAge Staff Despite advances in treatment, heart disease still fells more women than all cancers combined. "For years men were in denial about their heart disease risk, and now women are in denial," says Albuquerque, N.M., cardiologist Joe Wise, M.D. Wise is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology and author of "A Primer on Heart Disease for Read more...