Investigators who previously found that a daily statin pill helps prevent heart attacks and strokes in people with HIV have now discovered a potential mechanism that may help to stabilize plaques and prevent their rupture in blood vessels. The research led by a team from Mass General Brigham is published in JAMA Cardiology.
"Individuals with HIV tend to have an excess of noncalcified plaques that are vulnerable to rupture at a younger age, putting them at high risk for strokes, heart attacks, and sudden cardiac death," said senior author Steven Grinspoon, MD, chief of the Metabolism Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system. "Understanding how statins benefit this population could lead to additional and more targeted therapies to protect their cardiovascular health."
The work is a secondary analysis of the phase 3 Randomized Trial to Prevent Vascular Events in HIV (REPRIEVE), which demonstrated that the cholesterol-lowering medication pitavastatin reduced the risk of adverse cardiovascular events by 36% over a median follow-up of 5.6 years in people with HIV. The effect was greater than what would be expected from cholesterol lowering alone.-science daily