A daily dose of atorvastatin 40 mg for 6 months could help to reduce pulmonary artery pressure among patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), according to data published in the Journal of Research in Pharmacy Practice.
Sayyed Gholamreza Mortazavi Moghadam, from the Birjand University of Medical Sciences in Birjand, Iran, and colleagues conducted a double-blind, randomized trial that included 42 known cases of COPD with systolic pulmonary arterial pressure greater than 25 mm Hg.
Twenty-one patients were randomly assigned to receive atorvastatin treatment (40 mg/day for 6 months), and 21 patients were randomly assigned to the control group without receiving atorvastatin. Participants were tested with echocardiography to measure systolic pulmonary pressure at baseline and after treatment.
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The baseline mean systolic pulmonary artery pressure level was 48.9 ± 3.3 mm Hg in the atorvastatin group, and the post-treatment mean was 38.4 ± 1.9 mmHg. In the control group, the mean systolic pulmonary artery pressure level at baseline was 45.6 ± 3.1 and the mean level post-treatment was 38.9 ± 2.4 mm Hg.
The researchers also found that patients who were treated with atorvastatin showed a significant decrease in total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol.
“A dose of 40 mg of atorvastatin per day for 6 months may have beneficial effects in reducing PAP [pulmonary artery pressure] and improving blood lipid profile in patients with COPD,” the study authors concluded. “Further studies are needed to overcome the limitations of the present study and to find long-term effects of statins on PAPs in COPD patients.”
Reference
- Arian A, Moghadam SGM, Kazemi T, Hajihosseini. The effects of statins on pulmonary artery pressure in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: A randomized controlled trial. J Res Pharm. 2017;6(1):27-30. doi:10.4103/2279-042x.200985
