Is There an Interaction Between Pravastatin and Clinical Events Other Than Vasospasm in Patients With Aneurysmal Subarachnoid Hemorrhage?

Abstract

To the Editor: We would like to congratulate Tseng et al1 for the article titled “Effects of acute treatment with Pravastatin on cerebral vasospasm, autoregulation, and delayed ischemic deficits after aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage: A phase II randomized placebo-controlled trial”. The authors hypothesized that statins might improve cerebral vasomotor activity through cholesterol-dependent and -independent mechanisms. They randomized aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage patients (18 to 84 years of age) within 72 hours from the ictus to receive either oral pravastatin (40 mg) or placebo daily for up to 14 days. They were able to show a decrease in incidence of vasospasm, duration of severe vasospasm, duration of impaired autoregulation, incidence of vasospasm-related delayed ischemic deficits and mortality with pravastatin treatment impressively in this 80-patient study. The authors’ center …