JUPITER TRIAL PARTICIPANTS Had Protection Against Heart Diease, and May have Less Dementia

Heart disease is the leading killer of women, and knowing your risk for heart disease is very important. By age 70 the risk of heart disease in women is equal to that of men. One way is to score your risk with either the Framingham score or use the Reynolds score. And in part they suggest checking your blood levels of inflammation with tests such as the c-reactive protein so you can get a Reynolds score. NAMS, Top Ten menopause stories of 2008, and Kudos to the Women's Health Practice research team for being involved in protecting women's hearts. And data is still coming out from that study. Justification for the Use of Statins in Primary Prevention: An Intervention Trial Evaluating Rosuvastatin : JUPITER. When the JUPITER trial results first appeared, it was said in the NY Times that this is a trial that would likely change the way doctors approach primary heart disease. The research took over 17,000 “apparently heart healthy” women and men  and were able to reduce their rate of first major cardiovascular event by 44%! So fewer heart attacks, fewer strokes, fewer individuals getting their blood vessels reamed out because they were clogged! To get into the trial these people, the healthy people, had an elevated rate of inflammation in their blood as measured by the C-reactive protein level.The JUPITER trial participants by taking statin medication were showing to have increased levels of anxiety, but they also from statin use have better bones and less dementia.  In a new study by a group of researchers across the country, they also looked at the C-CRP, and the other lesser known tests of heart disease, like your ankle-brachial index and whether your coronary arteries have calcium, and found that they were good predictors of heart disease as well. It takes many aspects of care to have a healthy heart: staying hydrated, exercising, being happy, and taking medications in some cases. The Rotterdam Heart Study also showed that newer heart tests are very worth while for predicting both heart failure and stroke, this is different than prevention, this is specifically getting early diagnosis and therapy, which is also important for heart health.. In young women the WHI (Women's Health Initiative) showed that estrogen therapy can keep your heart young, but in older women, or women more than 10 years past the start of menopause, estrogen therapy cannot reverse heart disease, but medications that lower blood fasting cholesterol levels can. So you may or may not be a candidate for starting a medication such as a statin just for C-CRP levels, but you may want to know your level, and you may want to know the level of other markers of blood inflammation and think about these results when talking to your Gyno Gab Gal or your own Gyno about general wellness and preventing heart disease.