Statins Significantly Reduce Stroke Mortality

A new study confirms that preexisting statin therapy reduces early mortality in patients with acute ischemic stroke, as well as improving their condition at hospital discharge.

Researchers at the University of Lübeck (Germany) investigated outcomes among 10,737 patients over a 42-month period that were diagnosed with ischemic stroke, and were entered into the German Federal State of Schleswig-Holstein stroke registry; among these patients, 5,565 were also diagnosed with hypercholesterolemia. In all, 88% of the patients with high cholesterol were treated with statins, and 24% of the patients who did not have high cholesterol were also treated with statin therapy. During a mean hospital stay of nine days, 4.8% of the patients succumbed to their strokes.

The results showed that among stroke patients on statins due to hypercholesterolemia, early mortality was 2.1%, compared with 12.5% among similar patients who were not treated with statins prior to admission for stroke. A similar difference in outcome was also seen for patients who did not have high cholesterol, but were taking statins for other reasons, such as heart disease and diabetes; the in-hospital mortality for these patients was 2.5%, while those with similar conditions who were not on statin therapy had an early mortality of 7%. The patients treated with statins also appeared to do better at discharge. The study was presented as a poster session during the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN), held during April 2012 in New Orleans (LA, USA).

“The early mortality was significantly lower in patients treated with statins than those who were not treated with statins, regardless of whether they had hypercholesterolemia,” said lead author and study presenter Mohamed Al-Khaled, MD, a fellow in neurology at the University of Lübeck. “We were surprised to see that statin therapy among those who did not have high cholesterol appears to improve outcomes.”

While several studies have shown that statins reduce risk in acute ischemic stroke, this is somewhat counter-balanced by the fact that they contribute to a slight increase in the risk of suffering a hemorrhagic stroke, where a ruptured blood vessel bleeds into the brain. One such study, published in the Lancet in 2007, found that 80 mg a day of statins reduced the risk of fatal and nonfatal ischemic strokes by 16%, but almost doubled the risk of hemorrhagic strokes, from 1.4% to 2.3%.

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University of Lübeck