Taking Statins Faithfully Lengthens Life(just about as well as people who took ac...),Health

For example, the five-year death rate for study participants who took the lipid-lowering drug clofibrate at least 80 percent of the time was 15 percent, compared to 24.6 percent of those who didn't follow orders.

But the numbers were virtually identical for those taking what they didn't know was a placebo -- a 15.1 percent mortality rate for those following the rules about taking the pill regularly, 28.3 percent for those not taking the pills as recommended, Hlatky said.

"It is definitely a very important observation that people who take their drugs always do better than people who don't, even if the drug is not terribly effective, because they tend to take better care of themselves better in a lot of ways," Hlatky said.

"While guidelines support the use of lipid-lowering medication in people with diabetes and other risk factors for coronary heart disease, they fall short in stipulating which class of lipid-lowering medication to use," said Dr. Erica Spatz, a fellow in the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at Yale University.

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Statins and other cholesterol-lowering drugs are described by the American Heart Association.

SOURCES: Mark A. Hlatky, M.D., professor, health research policy and medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif.; Erica Spatz, M.D., fellow, Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.; Feb. 9, 2009, Archives of Internal Medicine