CardioExchange Archive

September 15th, 2014

Cheaper Generic Statins Beat Brand-Name Statins in Adherence and Outcomes

Larry Husten, PHD

A large observational study finds that people who received a prescription for a generic statin were more likely to take their pills than people who received a prescription for a brand-name statin. This increased adherence appeared to lead to a small but significant improvement in outcomes. In a paper published in Annals of Internal Medicine, Joshua Gagne […]

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July 17th, 2013

Stroke Risk Increases with Nonadherence to Antihypertensive Therapy

Larry Husten, PHD

A large new observational study demonstrates that people who don’t take their antihypertensive medications are much more likely to have a stroke. The new study, published in the European Heart Journal, used nationwide prescription, hospital, and mortality records from 73,527 hypertensive patients in Finland. The investigators compared 26,704 patients who were hospitalized for or died of stroke with […]

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April 2nd, 2013

Lifelong Statin Sentence Now Includes Furloughs

Larry Husten, PHD

Although the benefits of statins are among the best documented in all of medicine, continuous lifelong statin therapy is not always easy to achieve in clinical practice. Now a new retrospective study suggests that although clinical events causing temporary cessation of statin therapy occur often, most of these patients are later able to resume statin therapy. […]

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November 14th, 2011

MI FREEE: How Much Do Free Medications Really Cost?

Larry Husten, PHD

Could getting rid of copayments improve adherence to post-discharge medications, leading to better  outcomes and reduced costs? That’s the theory tested by the MI FREEE (Post-Myocardial Infarction Free Rx Event and Economic Evaluation) trial, which was presented at the AHA and  published simultaneously in the New England Journal of Medicine. Niteesh Choudhry and colleagues randomized 5855 post-MI patients […]

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