Statins, medications designed to lower cholesterol and prevent heart disease, can also cut the risk of developing major blood clots, a huge new study suggests.
"It is another benefit of an extraordinary class of drug," said Dr. Paul Ridker of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, who led the study.
The findings come from data from the Jupiter trial, a landmark study of 17,802 patients with healthy cholesterol levels but high levels of a protein associated with heart disease, called C-reactive protein, or CRP.
Jupiter found that the statin Crestor dramatically cut deaths, heart attacks and strokes in those patients -- who are not usually given statins.
Now, a sub-analysis of the data from Jupiter finds that Crestor, known as rosuvastatin, also reduces the risk of venous thromboembolism by 43 per cent in those patients.
Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a blood clot in a vein. The most common form, called deep vein thrombosis, usually occurs in the deep veins in the legs. If the clot dislodges and travels to the lungs, it can be fatal.
For the study, researchers divided the men and women into two groups: one took 20 milligrams of Crestor once a day; the rest took a placebo.
After an average of two years, 34 of those on Crestor developed VTE compared to 60 in the placebo group.
What's more, there was also no bleeding risk with Crestor, which is an issue with other anti-clotting medicines, such as heparin and warfarin.
Researchers do not know whether the benefits were due to reducing CRP or cholesterol, since Crestor did both. But Ridker, who has studied many statin drugs, believes that other statins would offer similar benefits similar.
Various anti-coagulant drugs, such as warfarin, are already given to patients who suffer a blood clot in order to prevent more from developing. This is the first time a statin has been shown to prevent VTE.
Crestor's manufacturer, AstraZeneca, sponsored the study, though played no role in the analysis.
The results were reported Sunday at the American College of Cardiology conference and published online by the New England Journal of Medicine.
"The results of this sub-analysis are very interesting, as they appear to show real benefit in terms of reduction of VTE risk in a very large patient population," said Dr. Subodh Verma, a cardiac surgeon at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto and a Jupiter investigator.
But some doctors said they weren't sure they would begin prescribing statins in addition to anticoagulants to patients who have had a previous venous blood clot. Dr. Timothy J. Gardner, the president of the American Heart Association, said more proof was still needed.
"I can't imagine that you would be treating people prophylactically yet," Gardner told the New York Times. "The dilemma is we don't want to put patients on medications that they don't need, especially if we're putting them on medications for life or for long term."
