Stroke survivors should not take statins: study

Courtesy of Reuters

People who have had a type of stroke caused by bleeding in the brain should avoid taking cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins. Although statins are commonly used to prevent heart attacks and strokes, they said the drugs could increase the risks of a second stroke in these patients, outweighing any other heart benefits from the drugs.

"Our analysis indicates that in settings of high recurrent intracerebral hemorrhage risk, avoiding statin therapy may be preferred," Dr. Brandon Westover of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School and colleagues wrote in the Archives of Neurology. That was especially true of people who had strokes in one of the brain's four lobes - frontal, parietal, temporal, or occipital - which recur more frequently than such strokes that occur deep in the brain. Westover said people who have had this type of stroke have a 22 percent risk of a second stroke when they take statins, compared with a 14 percent risk in people who are not taking a statin.