HEART AND STROKE: Staying on Statins

Maintain your medication routine is essential

BY:MYRA DEMBROW

Uninterrupted use of prescribed statins, used to lower cholesterol, is important and can cut the risk of heart attack by 30 percent. A recent study in Holland found that people who stopped taking statins were 30 percent more likely to be hospitalized with a heart attack than those in the study who continued on statins.

"You have a high risk when you start using these drugs," says Ron Herings, PharmD, PhD, director of the PHARMO Institute in Amsterdam and author of the report published in the December 7, 2006, online edition of the European Heart Journal. "When you stop, your risk increases to [the] baseline."