20 July 2012

New Life Saving Pill

A new pill has been studied at Queen Mary University of London with astounding results. The results showed that this medication, to be taken once daily, could potentially prevent 94,000 heart attacks and strokes each year.
The study looked at 84 over 50’s who were given either the new polypill or a dummy pill once a day for three months. After this period, the participant’s pills were swapped, so that over the 6 month period each participant had spent half their time taking each pill. The results showed that the pill could cut levels of bad cholesterol by 39% and blood pressure by 12%.

Dr David Wald, consultant cardiologist, said: “The health implications of our results are large.
If people took the polypill from age 50, an estimated 28% would benefit by avoiding or delaying a heart attack or stroke during their lifetime.”

The safety of taking this pill daily has not yet been fully investigated but scientists are saying that the components of the pill have been used for decades. The polypill contains no aspirin, which has caused previous concerns about the risk of causing internal bleeding. The new pill could therefore, once more research has been conducted, provide a safer alternative in an effort to reduce the number of heart attacks and strokes experienced by people every day.

Helen Williams, cardiac medicines spokesperson for the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, said: “This very small study demonstrates that such a pill does have the expected effect on these risk factors, however a much larger study would be needed to show the impact of these changes in blood pressure and cholesterol on cardiac events, and also to demonstrate the overall safety of exposing large numbers of essentially healthy people to these medicines. Whilst these results are promising, further research is needed before a wide scale rollout of such a strategy.”