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Statins are well accepted for cardiovascular risk reduction, but are they helpful as a pretreatment of donor hearts? Statins have pleiotropic effects including cardioprotective effects, independent of their effects on lipids. Investigators from Finland hypothesized that administering simvastatin to a heart donor might protect against ischemia-reperfusion injury (NCT01160978).
The team randomized 84 multiorgan donors who had been declared brain dead to receive, or not to receive, 80 mg of simvastatin by nasogastric tube. The median age of the donors was 45, and the median age of the recipients was 57. Compared with nontreatment, donor heart pretreatment with simvastatin significantly lowered recipients' postoperative plasma levels of troponin…