Adding a triglyceride lowering drug to cholesterol fighting statins provided no additional protection from heart attack, stroke and death from heart disease in patients with Type 2 diabetes, according to data from a large study.
The National Institutes of Health-run study dubbed Accord aimed to see if the dual drug therapy could reduce the cardiovascular events in diabetes patients at particularly high risk of serious heart problems due to additional risk factors, such as obesity and high blood pressure.
All subjects in the 5,518-patient trial took Merck & Co's cholesterol-reducing Zocor, which is available generically as simvastatin. One group also received TriCor, an Abbott Laboratories medicine to lower the blood fat triglycerides and raise good HDL cholesterol that belongs to a class of drugs called fibrates.
There was an 8% risk reduction from the combination therapy compared with the statin plus placebo, but researchers said the result did not approach statistical significance, so the small difference could have been a fluke.
"Although our analysis suggests that certain patients may benefit from combination therapy, this study provides important information that should spare many people with diabetes unneeded therapy with fibrates," said Dr. Henry Ginsberg, the study's lead investigator, who presented the data at the American College of Cardiology scientific meeting in Atlanta.
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