Comparison of Clinical Efficacy of Rosuvastatin versus Simvastatin for Hyperlipidemia in Elderly Patients

Objective:To explore the efficacy and safety of rosuvastatin and simvastatin in the elderly patients with hyperlipi-demia. Methods: In the randomized and double-blind trial, 126 patients enrolled from January to August 2008 were divided into two groups. All of the patients were male and older than 70 years old, mean age (78.6±8.3) years old. The treatment group (63 cases) was treated with rosuvastatin 5 mg·d-1, and the control group (63 cases) was treated with simvastatin 10 mg ·d-1. The course of the treat-ment continued for 8 weeks. All of the patients kept the general treatment of the primary disease and stopped other lowering lipid drugs for 2 weeks. Results: TC, LDL-C and TG were reduced by 27.5%, 36.6% and 12.7% respectively in the rosuvastatin group after 8 weeks treatment, and 27.4%, 33.6% and 12.5% in simvastatin group. There were no statistical differences between the two groups (P0.05). HDL-C levels increased significantly in the rosuvastatin group (10.9%) compared with the simvastatin group (2.4%). All of the patients had good compliance and tolerance to the two drugs during the trial. No serious adverse events related to drugs were observed. Conclusion: 5 mg rosuvastatin showed no significant difference in decreasing the levels of TC, LDL-C, TG compared with 10 mg simvastatin. However, HDL-C of the rosuvastatin group increased more significantly than that of simvastatin group.