[Statins-a panacea?].

Statins have proven their therapeutical value for a wide range of patients with coronary heart disease. The average reduction of the relative risk for cardiovascular events is 23%. This remains true even in the light of ALLHAT, which had failed to show a significant reduction in mortality in the statin subgroup, yet its significance suffered from an insufficient difference in the reduction of plasma lipids in the intervention group as compared to usual care. On the other hand, ASCOT and PROSPER have demonstrated the efficacy of statins in normolipemic hypertensives and elderly patients. The safety of statin therapy can be considered as good; for example the Prospective Pravastatin Pooling Project with 19,592 patients found a rate of unexpected events equal to placebo.