Statins may benefit women as much as men

By Roxanne Nelson (Reuters Health) – A large international analysis finds that statin drugs reduce heart risk factors like high cholesterol as effectively in women as they do in men. The results, based on pooled data from 22 clinical trials, include a finding that reductions in deaths from any cause were similar for men and women taking statins. "This can give reassurance to clinicians that when treating a female patient they can apply the same risk-based considerations when prescribing statin therapy as for men," said Dr. Jordan Fulcher, a cardiologist and research fellow at the NHMRC Clinical Trials Center at the University of Sydney in Australia. "In particular we demonstrated a significant all-cause mortality reduction for women taking statins, a finding which was not reported in any of the individual trials,” said Fulcher, one of the report’s lead authors, in an email to Reuters Health.



via Health News Headlines - Yahoo News http://ift.tt/1K6936S