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Current guidelines recommend the aggressive use of statins, such as pravastatin, to lower lipid levels and, thus, risk for cardiovascular disease (American Heart Association guideline). However, despite the overall excellent hepatic safety profile of statins (only about 1% of patients in statin trials developed liver-enzyme elevations), underlying liver disease is a label-defined contraindication. Because of this concern about liver-related toxicity, gastroenterologists (and hepatologists, specifically) often are consulted before statins are prescribed for patients with liver disease.
To evaluate statins’ lipid-lowering ability and hepatic safety, researchers in the U.S. and Mexico conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, in…