{"id":14123,"date":"2011-11-22T19:10:12","date_gmt":"2011-11-23T00:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?post_type=news&#038;p=14123"},"modified":"2011-11-22T19:10:12","modified_gmt":"2011-11-23T00:10:12","slug":"long-term-follow-up-of-hps-shows-extended-benefits-of-statins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2011\/11\/22\/long-term-follow-up-of-hps-shows-extended-benefits-of-statins\/","title":{"rendered":"Long-Term Follow-up of HPS Shows Extended Benefits of Statins"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Long-term follow-up of patients enrolled in the Heart Protection Study (HPS) demonstrates continued benefits in the group originally randomized to receive simvastatin instead of placebo. The\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ctsu.ox.ac.uk\/~hps\/pubs\/Lancet%20360;7-22.pdf\">main results of the HPS<\/a>, published in 2002, showed a significant 23% reduction at 5.3 years in major vascular events associated with simvastatin treatment among the 20,536 patients with coronary disease enrolled in the trial.<\/p>\n<p>Now the HPS investigators report the follow-up results after a mean of 11 years in\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.thelancet.com\/journals\/lancet\/article\/PIIS0140-6736(11)61125-2\/abstract \">a paper published online in the\u00a0<em>Lancet<\/em><\/a>. After the trial ended, statin use and, consequently, LDL levels were similar between the two groups. In the first post-trial year, patients who had been randomized to simvastatin during the trial had an additional 14% reduction in events compared with patients who had been randomized to placebo (p=0.05). After the first post-trial year, there were no further additional differences between the former groups, but the relative difference between the two groups remained unchanged.<\/p>\n<p>Overall during the post-trial period, there were no significant differences between the two original randomized groups: 21.7% and 22.5% of the patients originally allocated to simvastatin and placebo, respectively, had a first event (RR 0.95, CI 0.89-1.02, p=0.17).\u00a0The incidence of cancer was the same in both groups: 17%. No other safety signals emerged during the 11 years.<\/p>\n<p>In an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thelancet.com\/journals\/lancet\/article\/PIIS0140-6736%2811%2961544-4\/fulltext\" target=\"_blank\">accompanying comment<\/a>, Payal Kohli and Christopher Cannon write that the long-term results of the HPS &#8220;suggest that the early benefit of statins is likely to be followed by a prolonged legacy period, with benefit maintained over time&#8221; and &#8220;that extended use of statins is safe with respect to possible risk of cancer and non-vascular mortality.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Long-term follow-up of patients enrolled in the Heart Protection Study (HPS) demonstrates continued benefits in the group originally randomized to receive simvastatin instead of placebo. The\u00a0main results of the HPS, published in 2002, showed a significant 23% reduction at 5.3 years in major vascular events associated with simvastatin treatment among the 20,536 patients with coronary [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[679,534,584],"class_list":["post-14123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prevention","tag-hps","tag-simvastatin","tag-statins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}