Benefits across stroke types seen in duration-dependent manner<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n
By Lori Solomon HealthDay Reporter<\/b><\/p>\n
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MONDAY, May 15, 2023 (HealthDay News) — Statin use is associated with a lower risk for incident stroke and transient ischemic attack (TIA) in a duration-dependent manner among patients with atrial fibrillation (AF), according to a study presented at the annual meeting of the European Heart Rhythm Association, held from April 16 to 18 in Barcelona, Spain.<\/p>\n
Jiayi Huang, from the University of Hong Kong, and colleagues assessed the association between statin use and AF-related outcomes among patients with AF. The analysis included 51,472 patients with newly diagnosed AF (2010 to 2018) categorized by statin therapy use (11,866 individuals) and statin nonuse (39,606 individuals).<\/p>\n
The researchers found that during a median follow-up of 5.1 years, previous statin use was significantly associated with a lower risk for ischemic stroke (IS)\/systemic embolism (SE), versus statin nonuse (subdistribution hazard ratio [SHR], 0.83). Similar patterns were seen for the associations between previous statin use and hemorrhagic stroke (HS; SHR, 0.93) and TIA (SHR, 0.85). Statin use of six or more years predicted a lower risk for IS\/SE, HS, and TIA (SHRs, 0.57, 0.56, 0.58, respectively) versus short-term statin use (three months to less than two years). In stratified analyses, a lower risk for IS was found to be associated with statin use consistently.<\/p>\n
“These data support the use of statins to prevent stroke and transient ischemic attack in patients with new-onset atrial fibrillation,” Huang said in a statement. “The findings have important clinical implications particularly given that in atrial fibrillation patients, ischemic strokes are often fatal or disabling, and have a high risk of recurrence.”<\/p>\n
Press Release<\/a><\/p>\n