Optimal cholesterol treatment is safe and highly effective, causing not only marked event reductions, but also plaque stabilization and even plaque regression.

The 4S Trial published in 1994 showed the large benefits in clinical outcomes between patients with heart disease who were treated with statin and those who were given only placebo. Statin treatment resulted in a 42% reduction of fatal heart attack, a 37% reduction in need for heart bypass and a 30% reduction of stroke.

Since 1994, other placebo-controlled clinical trials were published demonstrating that statin therapy reduced risk regardless of the baseline level of LDL cholesterol. High risk patents with high, moderate, normal and low LDL cholesterol all benefited similarly from statin.

The large risk reductions achievable with statin are not matched by any other type of treatment - not bypass, not stent, not other medications.

Optimal cholesterol treatment causes beneficial transformation within the plaque itself - it lowers lipid content and makes the plaques more stable and less likely to rupture and cause heart attack.

Using intravascular ultrasound, aggressive LDL cholesterol lowering with statin can induced plaque regression. In this study, LDL cholesterol reduction to less than 70 mg/dl was accompanied by regression which until recently was not thought to be attainable.

Reduction in the severity of blockage was also demonstrated during cardiac catheterization following aggressive LDL reduction.