orking on new antibiotic candidates, Akira Endo found in 1976 that statins could strongly inhibit HMG-CoA reductase. It turned out that his discovery was the most important advance in cardiovascular prevention since aspirin and blood pressure-lowering. Contradicting most epidemiological studies which failed to find a link between cholesterol levels and stroke, 2 statins strongly reduce stroke incidence. This prompted an investigation of the non-cholesteroldependent effects of statins, so called pleiotropic effects, on biologic actions related to plaque instability, inflammation, endothelial function, fibrinolytic activity, platelet function, 3 as well as cerebral blood flow and NO-enhancing pathways leading to neuroprotection.
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Amarenco et al. (2006) studied this question.
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