Statins lower stroke in young people

Researchers at the Helsinki University Central Hospital ran an interesting experiment, and the results were published yesterday in Neurology. Their study applies directly to me!

They researched 215 young patients -  from 15 to 49, average age 39 years - that had a history of stroke with no identifiable cause (that's me). A relatively large percentage of strokes in young people are indeterminate in origin - some 20-30%. Anyways, they took these stroke survivors and examined their history of statin use post-stroke.

The most commonly prescribed statin was simvistatin, but it appeared as though all statins worked about the same. One third of the patients received a statin sometime after their stroke.

The result they were looking for were follow on strokes, MI's, arterial occlusions, and the like (including death). The outcome of the research was eye-opening:

• 29 people (20%) that didn't use a statin post-stroke suffered one of these outcomes.
• 4 people (11%) had an event after discontinuation of a statin.
• 0 people on continuous statin use had an event.

The people that were on a statin generally had some condition (non stroke related) that had them on it in the first place. They tended to have higher baseline LDL's (133mg/dl) than people that were never on a statin to manage LDL (101mg/dl). So the thinking is that people could benefit from a statin regardless of their initial LDL levels - these drugs do more than just lower LDL. They also do things like change inflammation response, stabilize plaques, among other effects.

Since the experiment was the only one to ever look at this particular population, and only this population, it's undetermined whether young people that have identifiable stroke causation would benefit from statin therapy.
For me, though, it seems quite apparent that the current regimen that I'm on is probably the right one for now .. eliminate whatever stroke risk factors you can and keep your lipid profile as good as possible.

It seems that we know more and more every day about this topic, and things will probably change, but for now I'm comfortable with what I'm doing...