Statin therapy for vascular failure.

There is increasing evidence that statins reduce cardiovascular events such as coronary artery disease or stroke in hypercholesterolemic patients in both primary and secondary prevention. The striking benefit achieved with statin treatments in patients with a wide range of cholesterol levels cannot be attributed to their cholesterol lowering effect alone. Substantial data has recently accumulated showing that statins exert various effects on multiple targets, namely pleiotropic effects, especially targeting the concept of 'vascular failure', including the improvement of vascular endothelial function, inhibition of vascular smooth muscle cell proliferation and migration, anti-inflammatory actions, anti-oxidative effects or stabilization of vulnerable plaques. These effects have potential in the treatments of coronary artery disease in various settings, such as prevention of its onset as well as its progression, or plaque rupture. Statin therapy should be more extensively applied even in normolipidemic patients if there are additional risk factors such as hypertension, diabetes mellitus, or others. Furthermore, statins may be used to intervene in earlier stage risk conditions such as postprandial hyperlipidemia or hyperglycemia, insulin resistant state, masked hypertension, or metabolic syndrome to further reduce mortality or morbidity of coronary artery disease and heart failure.