The eagerly-awaited results of the 15-year Glasgow University investigation into the long-term effect of statin therapy shows that statins are as effective as had been hoped and supposed.

It reassures those doctors who have been persuading their patients to take statins since they were first launched. It has also revealed a few additional facts that further confound critics who alarm patients with poor or little researched suggestions that statins are only heralded as one of the major advances in late 20th-century medicine because of subtle advertising.

The Glasgow study shows that taking statins for even a limited time, such as five years, is better than not taking them ever. After ten years they still reduce the number of non-fatal heart attacks and deaths from heart attacks by 27 per cent. The MRC Oxford trial that was set up after the start of the Glasgow trial has already produced results that show the longer a patient takes statins, and the lower their cholesterol levels this achieves, the better it is for the patient’s outlook.

Originally statin therapy was prescribed solely because it could be shown to reduce blood levels of cholesterol, especially the low density lipo protein, the so called bad cholesterol that wreaks the damage on a patient’s arteries.

Later in 2005 the Medical Research Council trials organised by Oxford and Sydney universities examined the results of more than 90,000 people. They showed that taking statin drugs regularly could cut the incidence of heart attacks by a third. It was this trial that underlined the advantage of taking statins long term and using them in doses large enough to reduce a patient’s cholesterol to lower levels than had hitherto been supposed. The Glasgow research workers emphasise that although five years of statins is better than none, nothing has suggested that patients should stop taking statins prematurely. The results from Glasgow and from Oxford and Sydney have not uncovered any unexpected side-effects.

It is now understood that lowering cholesterol is only part of the story of how statins achieve their results. It is thought that they also reduce inflammation in the coronary arterial wall and may affect the adherence of the atheromatous plaque to the wall so that it is less likely to become detached. They may alter the nature of the envelope of the atheromatous plaque and the fatty constituent material within it. It is the rupture of the plaque that leads to a coronary thrombosis. Statins also improve arterial blood flow, which may also account for reports of statins cutting incidents of Alzheimer’s, macular degeneration of the eye, and osteoporosis in elderly men.

Recent, as yet unpublished, work suggests that statins are not only invaluable in the treatment of type 2 diabetes because they are beneficial to arterial flow but also have an influence on blood glucose levels.