By Michelle Fay Cortez
March 31 (Bloomberg) -- A cocktail of aspirin and four other generic drugs, combined in a single pill, may halve the risk of heart disease in middle-aged people, researchers said.
A study of 2,053 seemingly healthy volunteers in India shows the treatment known as a polypill may be a simple and effective way to combat heart disease, researchers said at the American College of Cardiology meeting in Florida. The pill combines a cholesterol-lowering medicine known as a statin and three blood pressure drugs with aspirin.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, killing 17.5 million people and accounting for about one in three deaths each year, according to the World Health Organization. The reductions in blood pressure, cholesterol levels and clotting seen with the combination pill could cut the risk of heart attack, stroke and death from heart disease in half, the study funded by India’s closely-held Cadila Pharmaceuticals Ltd. and published in the journal Lancet found.
“Before this study, there were no data about whether it was even possible to put five active ingredients into a single pill,” said Salim Yusuf, from McMaster University’s population health research institute in Hamilton, Ontario. “We found that it works,” he said. “It could revolutionize heart disease prevention as we know it.”
Doctors must ensure that a single pill doesn’t lead people to abandon lifestyle choices, such as a healthy diet and regular exercise, which really benefit the heart, said Christopher Cannon, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, in an editorial. Larger, longer studies are needed to determine the most effective doses and ensure that the approach does save lives, Cannon wrote.
Prevent, Not Treat
“The study does take a first and crucial step forward and raises hope that, in conjunction with other global efforts to improve diet and exercise, the polypill could one day substantially reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease in the world,” Cannon wrote.
In the study, 400 people were given the combination pill known as Polycap and about 200 people each were put into comparison groups that received a single medication, a mixture of the blood pressure drugs or the blood pressure drugs plus aspirin. The Polycap patients had similar reductions in blood pressure and heart rate as the comparison groups, and a slightly smaller drop in cholesterol levels than those getting simvastatin, a generic version of Merck & Co.’s Zocor.
The patients had near normal levels of blood pressure, cholesterol and other laboratory markers of heart health. The researchers are studying whether the pill can prevent cardiovascular disease from developing in healthy people, rather than treating people who are already ill.
To contact the reporter on this story: Michelle Fay Cortez in London at mcortez@bloomberg.net
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