Drug Can Boost ‘Good’ Cholesterol Levels, Cut Death Risk, Study Finds

The drug gemfibrozil--largely displaced by the new statin drugs--may not lower the amount of “bad” cholesterol in the blood, but it can increase the amount of “good” cholesterol, which may cut the risk of death, heart attack and stroke by 22% to 29%, according to a new study.

“For patients with coronary heart disease whose primary lipid abnormality is low HDL (‘good’) cholesterol,” the researchers report in today’s New England Journal of Medicine, “gemfibrozil is effective for the prevention” of heart attack and death from heart disease.

“We now have a new therapy option for the 20% to 30% of coronary heart disease patients who don’t have high LDL (‘bad’) cholesterol but do have low levels of beneficial HDL cholesterol,” said lead author Dr. Hanna Bloomfield Rubins of the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

--Compiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II