Patients whose cholesterol level improves after one month of statin therapy reduce their risk for both ischemic stroke and myocardial infarction, according to a presentation at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology.

French researchers enrolled 4,731 people within one to six months of having an ischemic stroke or transient ischemic attack who had no history of heart disease. Half the patients were randomized to atorvastatin and half to placebo. The participants were then followed for an average of four and a half years.

For each 10-percent decrease in low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, the risk of stroke was reduced by four percent and the risk of myocardial infarction was reduced by seven percent. The average decrease in low-density cholesterol after one month on statin therapy was 53 percent.

“These findings reinforce the importance of controlling cholesterol,” said presenter Pierre Amarenco, MD, of Denis Diderot University in Paris, France, and Fellow member of the American Academy of Neurology. “It’s encouraging to see that reducing cholesterol so quickly can have positive long-term effects.”

People with higher levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol at the beginning of the study and after one month had a lower risk of stroke.

The study was part of the Stroke Prevention by Aggressive Reduction in Cholesterol Levels (SPARCL) trial.