Lipitor/Norvasc combo cuts heart attack risk 53%

The risk of heart attack can be reduced more than 50% by combining the cholesterol-lowerer Lipitor (atorvastatin) calcium, with the blood pressure-lowering calcium channel blocker Norvasc (amlodipine besylate), both sold by Pfizer, and the benefits are evident for heart attacks as early as 90 days after the start of treatment, according to data from the Anglo-Scandinavian Cardiac Outcomes Trial, published in the December 4 on-line issue of the European Heart Journal.

Additionally, in the study, the simultaneous initiation of the two drugs was about three times more effective at preventing heart attacks than adding Lipitor to one of the world's most widely-used blood pressure-lowering drugs, the beta blocker atenolol.

Findings from ASCOT, which recruited over 19,000 patients from the UK, Ireland and the Nordic countries, show that the addition of Lipitor to Norvasc cut the risk of fatal and non-fatal cardiac events 53%, and clinical benefits were evident after only three months' treatment (p=0.02). This contrasted with the addition of Lipitor to atenolol, which only achieved a non-significant 16% reduction by the end of the study (median 3.3 years).