The two cheap new drugs that could prevent thousands of heart attacks

Patients could be offered a combination of two cheap drugs to prevent thousands of , research suggests. A study found that treating people who have suffered a heart attack with and the cholesterol-lowering drug ezetimibe. Professor Kausik Ray, from Imperial College 's School of Public Health, said: "This study shows that we could save lives and reduce further heart attacks by giving patients a combination of two low-cost drugs.

"But at the moment patients across the world aren't receiving these drugs together. That is causing unnecessary and avoidable heart attacks and deaths - and also places unnecessary costs on healthcare systems. Our study shows the way forward. Care pathways must now change for patients after this type of heart event."

Patients are at the greatest risk of suffering a new heart attack in the first year after the initial event. This is because the blood vessels are more sensitive and it is easier for blood clots to develop.

Reducing "bad" cholesterol in the blood can stabilise changes in the vessels and cut the risk of new events, the scientists said.

Researchers at Lund University in and Imperial College London looked at data from 36,000 patients who had a heart attack between 2015 and 2022, according to the Swedish registry. They used advanced statistical models to emulate a clinical trial.

Patients who received a combination treatment of statins and ezetimibe within 12 weeks of a heart attack and were able to lower cholesterol to the target level early had a better prognosis and less risk of new cardiovascular events and death than those who received the add-on treatment later, or not at all, according to the study.

Professor Ray said: "Ezetimibe is already widely available and prescribed for relatively low cost. This add-on therapy could be rolled out for around £350 a year per patient, which is a huge cost saving compared to the lasting impacts of treating heart attacks and the impact they have on patients' lives."

Researcher Margret Leosdottir, Lund University associate professor and senior cardiology consultant at Skane University Hospital in Malmo, Sweden, welcomed the results, saying that "by giving patients a combination treatment earlier, we could help to prevent many more heart attacks".

If 100% of patients received ezetimibe early, the researchers estimated that 133 heart attacks could be avoided in a population of 10,000 patients in three years.

There are around 100,000 admissions from heart attacks a year in the UK, the researchers said. This would equate to an estimated 5,000 heart attacks being prevented over a 10-year period, they suggest.

Dr Leosdottir said there are reasons why medics are cautious about combination therapy. She said: "Combination therapy is not applied up-front for two main reasons.

"General recommendations are not included in today's guidelines and a precautionary principle is applied to avoid side effects and over-medication.

"However, there are positive effects from applying both medicines as soon after the infarction as possible.

"Not doing this entails an increased risk. In addition, the drug we have examined in the study causes few side effects and is readily available and inexpensive in many countries."

The findings were published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.