The Use Of Nicotinic Acid In The Treatment Of Heart Disease

The Use Of Nicotinic Acid In The Treatment Of Heart Disease.
Combining the vitamin niacin with a cholesterol-lowering statin tranquillizer appears to put up patients no service and may also increase side effects, a new study indicates. It's a disconcerting result from the largest-ever study of niacin for heart patients, which involved almost 26000 people. In the study, patients who added the B-vitamin to the statin sedate Zocor saw no added profit in terms of reductions in heart-related death, non-fatal heart attack, stroke, or the need for angioplasty or get round surgeries.

The study also found that people taking niacin had more incidents of bleeding and (or) infections than those who were taking an idle placebo, according to a team reporting Saturday at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology, in San Francisco. "We are frustrated that these results did not show benefits for our patients," study lead author Jane Armitage, a professor at the University of Oxford in England, said in a encounter news release. "Niacin has been old for many years in the belief that it would help patients and prevent heart attacks and stroke, but we now recognize that its adverse side effects outweigh the benefits when used with current treatments".

Niacin has long been employed to boost levels of "good" HDL cholesterol and decrease levels of "bad" LDL cholesterol and triglycerides (fats) in the blood in forebears at risk for heart disease and stroke. However, niacin also causes a tot of side effects, including flushing of the skin. A drug called laropiprant can lose weight the incidence of flushing in people taking niacin. This new study included patients with narrowing of the arteries.

They received either 2 grams of extended-release niacin gain 40 milligrams of laropiprant or corresponding placebos. All of the patients also took Zocor (simvastatin). The patients from China, the United Kingdom and Scandinavia were followed for an unexceptional of almost four years.