Diabetes Patients with High Triglycerides and Low HDL Cholesterol Get the Most Benefit From Fenofibrate Treatment: New Data From the F...( SYDNEY Australia Feb. 26 /- Fenof...),Health

SYDNEY, Australia, Feb. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Fenofibrate treatment reduces cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk (defined by total cardiovascular events: the composite of cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, stroke, and coronary and carotid revascularization) in patients with type 2 diabetes and atherogenic dyslipidemia, that is, the combination of high triglyceride (2.3 mmol/L-200mg/dL or higher) and low high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol (<1.03 mmol/L-40mg/dL in men and <1.3 mmol/L-50mg/dL in women), according to new data from the Fenofibrate Intervention and Event Lowering in Diabetes (FIELD) study published in Diabetes Care.

In these patients, fenofibrate treatment was associated with a significant 27% relative reduction in the risk of cardiovascular events, compared with 11% in FIELD patients overall.(1)

Professor Russell Scott, investigator and executive member of the FIELD Study Management Committee, Director of the Lipid and Diabetes Research Group, and Professor of Medicine, Christchurch Hospital, New Zealand, said:

This 27% relative reduction in total CVD events with fenofibrate in type 2 diabetes patients with marked atherogenic dyslipidemia is of a similar order to that observed with statin treatment. Physicians can prevent one fatal or non-fatal cardiovascular event by treating only 23 of these patients over 5 years with fenofibrate.

Patients with, or at increased risk of, type 2 diabetes often have an abnormal combination of high triglycerides and low HDL cholesterol. Population studies have shown that this predicts cardiovascular risk, partly independent of levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol.

In people with diabetes, even when the LDL cholesterol level is reduced to <1.8 mmol/L-70mg/dL with statin therapy, cardiovascular risk is almost 50% higher for patients with high triglyceride (>2.3 mmol/L-200mg/dL) than tho
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