Aggressive Therapy Is Not Always the Best Therapy

At about the same time, the angiographic trial REGRESS (Regression Growth Evaluation Statin Study), which included patients with a baseline serum cholesterol level between 155 and 310 mg/dl, showed a highly significant beneficial effect of 40 mg pravastatin on progression of coronary atherosclerosis, and the magnitude of this effect seemed to be the same in all quartiles of baseline total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) (to convert from mg/dl to mmol/l, multiply by 0.026) (3). The PROVE IT-TIMI 22 (Pravastatin or Atorvastatin Evaluation and Infection Therapy-Thrombolysis In Myocardial Infarction 22) trial compared the effects of 40 mg pravastatin and 80 mg atorvastatin in patients who had recently been hospitalized for an acute coronary syndrome and had a serum total cholesterol level