New to prevent stroke recurrence. French researchers have just presented the results of a study at the Congress of the AHA, the great American mass of cardiology currently taking place in Philadelphia. A study of 2,860 patients in France and Korea, which shows the crucial importance of treating very bad cholesterol very intensively in patients who have already suffered a stroke.
Stroke is 150,000 new every year, one every four minutes in France. Until then, the recommendation after a stroke was to prescribe statin therapy for these patients to lower their bad cholesterol level to one gram per liter. Now, what this study proves is that you have to hit even harder, with more intensive treatment, to bring down the rate of bad cholesterol even more.
"What is important is the target": less than 0.7 g / l
The new goal is less than 0.7 g / l and this is proven, it avoids more than one stroke recurrence out of 5. "What is important is the target. less than 0.7 gram per liter, with a low dose of statin, it is perfect, but if you do not reach it with this low dose, then you have to increase the dose, gradually, until you reach the target " explains the neurologist Pierre Amarenco, lead author of the study and head of the neurology department at Bichat Hospital in Paris. "And if you do not hit the target with high doses of statin, you have another drug, called ezetimibe, that blocks the intestinal absorption of cholesterol."
>> Listen to the interview of Professor Philippe-Gabriel Steg, Head of Cardiology at Bichat Hospital
So the results of this study should change the practices. Now all neurologists, cardiologists and even generalists will have this goal quantified for their patients who have had a stroke: a bad cholesterol below 0.7g per liter, with intensive treatment if necessary, and this, any their life.