Cholesterol is a type of fat found in every cell in the body. It’s needed for many important jobs, like making hormones and helping cells work properly.
But too much cholesterol can be harmful.
When there’s too much of it in the blood, it can stick to the walls of arteries and form blockages. This can increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
To control high cholesterol, doctors often give patients medicines called statins. Statins work by slowing down how much cholesterol the liver makes. This mostly lowers “bad” cholesterol, which is also known as LDL cholesterol. These drugs have helped many people lower their risk of heart disease.
However, statins don’t work for everyone. Some people feel muscle or joint pain when they take statins and have to stop.
Others take statins but still need extra help to bring their cholesterol down. That’s where a new drug, called bempedoic acid, comes in.
Bempedoic acid is a new type of medicine that may help people who can’t take statins or who need more help lowering cholesterol.
It was developed by a company called Esperion Therapeutics. Scientists talked about this new drug at a big medical meeting called ENDO 2023, which was held in Chicago.
Researchers tested this drug in a large study called the CLEAR Outcomes Trial. They wanted to see if it could help people who couldn’t take statins. The results were promising. Bempedoic acid lowered LDL cholesterol by about 21%, and it also lowered the risk of heart attacks and strokes by 13%.
At first, scientists weren’t sure if bempedoic acid could protect the heart as well as statins do. But after looking more closely at the data, they saw that people who took bempedoic acid had fewer serious heart problems than those who took a fake pill. This means the new drug might work just as well as statins for lowering heart disease risk.
Dr. A. Michael Lincoff, a heart doctor and one of the study’s authors, said this is very important. He explained that heart disease is still the number one cause of death and disability around the world.
That’s why new treatments are so valuable. Not everyone can take statins or take enough of them, so having another option like bempedoic acid can help more people stay healthy.
Dr. Lincoff also said this discovery shows that different types of cholesterol-lowering drugs can give similar heart benefits. That’s different from diabetes drugs, where some help the heart and others don’t, even if they all lower blood sugar.
In the future, bempedoic acid could become a useful new tool for treating high cholesterol. It gives hope to people who haven’t been able to manage their cholesterol with statins alone. This also shows how important it is to keep doing medical research to find better ways to treat heart disease.
Overall, bempedoic acid may give patients another choice to lower their cholesterol and reduce the risk of serious heart problems. It’s one more step toward helping people live longer and healthier lives.
If you care about heart health, please read studies about heart disease hidden and essential vitamins for heart health: a guide to a healthy heart.
If you care about heart health, please read studies about the stuff in your mouth that can increase heart attack risk and statin alternative lowers risk of heart disease as well as cholesterol levels.
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