Anti-inflammatory drug cuts heart attack risk, study shows

A study of 10,000 patients has suggested that anti-inflammatory drugs could cut the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

A trial of the drug canakinumab could represent the biggest breakthrough in treatment since the advent of statins to lower cholesterol, the study’s authors say.

The study reported a 15 per cent reduction in the risk of a repeat heart attack among parents, but others questioned he drug’s efficacy, side-effects and cost.

Recipients of the drug had an increased risk of potentially fatal infections. However, the British Heart Foundation (BHF) said the trial could still help save lives.

In the study, 10,000 patients who had previously had a heart attack were treated with the anti-inflammatory drug once every three months. The trial monitored the individuals for up to four years.

It found what researchers said were reductions in risk ‘above and beyond’ those seen in patients who only took statins - but it also found a ‘significantly higher incidence’ of potentially fatal infection and sepsis among those treated with the drug.

Canakinumab was initially developed by Novartis, a pharmaceutical firm which paid for the trial, to treat rheumatoid arthritis.

Paul Ridker, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said: “For the first time, we've been able to definitively show that lowering inflammation independent of cholesterol reduces cardiovascular risk. This has far-reaching implications.

“In my lifetime, I've gotten to see three broad eras of preventative cardiology.

"In the first, we recognised the importance of diet, exercise and smoking cessation. In the second, we saw the tremendous value of lipid-lowering drugs such as statins. Now, we're cracking the door open on the third era. This is very exciting.”

Dr Robert Harrington, chair of the Stanford University School of Medicine, sounded a note of caution in an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine. He said the effects of anti-inflammatories could be ‘modest’, and the absolute clinical benefit of canakinumab ‘cannot justify’ its routine use ‘until we understand more about the efficacy and safety trade-offs, and unless a price restructuring and formal cost-effectiveness evaluation supports it’.

However, Jeremy Person, associate medical director at the BHF, said: “The findings suggest that existing anti-inflammatory drugs, such as canakinumab, could be given along with cholesterol-lowering drugs to treat survivors and further reduce their risk of another heart attack."