Statins found to lower blood pressure in US study

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO, April 14 (Reuters) - Popular cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins also can lower blood pressure, U.S. researchers said on Monday, helping to explain why statins have been shown to prevent strokes as well as heart attacks.

They said patients who took two different types of statins saw modest but rapid declines in both their top and bottom blood pressure readings.

"It really looks very clearly that there is a consistent but modest improvement," said Dr. Beatrice Golomb of the University of California, San Diego, whose work was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

"This may be especially important for explaining the stroke benefits of statins," she said in a telephone interview.

Statins fight heart disease primarily by lowering levels of low-density lipoprotein, the so-called bad cholesterol that can clog arteries and cause heart attacks.

"LDL cholesterol shows really no consistent relationship to stroke and yet statins have lowered stroke risk in many studies," Golomb said.

"Blood pressure, in contrast to LDL cholesterol, is a very powerful contributor to stroke and this may help explain some of the reduced risks of stroke," she said.

Statins are the world's top-selling drugs, pulling in billions of dollars for their makers. In addition to the cardiovascular effects, the drugs have been shown to have some unexpected benefits, such as lowering the risk of death from influenza, pneumonia and the effects of smoking.

Researchers believe this may be because the drugs affect the amount of inflammation in the body.

BENEFIT AT ONE MONTH

Golomb said she was intrigued by studies suggesting statins improved blood pressure but she said there were no major, rigorously conducted trials showing this effect.

Her team studied statins and blood pressure in nearly 1,000 people who were divided into three groups. One group got the statin drug simvastatin, which is sold by Merck & Co (MRK.N) under the brand name Zocor. Another group got pravastatin or Pravachol, made by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co (BMY.N). A third group got a placebo.

"In both statins the effect was beginning to emerge at one month of treatment," Golomb said.

She said the drugs reduced systolic blood pressure, the top number of the blood pressure reading, and diastolic blood pressure, the bottom number, by 2 to 3 millimeters of mercury compared with placebo.

"The size of the effect was modest but it was very statistically significant," Golomb said. "There is very little chance the finding could have emerged by chance."