Healthy people may be able to cut their risk of heart disease in half by taking a "super pill" combining three drugs to lower blood pressure and cholesterol, a study said Monday.
The pill, which combines low doses of aspirin and two drugs to lower blood pressure and fight cholesterol, was compared with eight other therapies during the three-month study involving 2,053 patients in India.
The possibility of taking a single pill to reduce multiple risk factors “could revolutionize heart disease prevention as we know it," said principal researcher Salim Yusuf.
The Indian Polycap Study was the first to evaluate how well the polypill is tolerated and whether it leads to meaningful changes in the body that can cause cardiovascular disease.
The study at St. John's Medical College, Bangalore, recruited patients from 50 heart centers between March 2007 and August 2008. Researchers found that taking the pill may enable healthy individuals to cut their risk of cardiovascular disease by 50 percent to 60 percent.
"This trial is a critical first step to inform the design of larger, more definitive studies, as well as further development of appropriate combinations of BP lowering drugs with statins and aspirin," Yusuf said.
The researchers found that the patients taking the polypill showed significant falls in cholesterol levels as well as in blood pressure.
Copyright AFP
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