Rosuvastatin and atorvastatin both are high-intensity statins. However, which statin
is more effective for the reversion of coronary atherosclerotic plaques remains inconclusive.
We, therefore, conducted a meta-analysis to provide further evidence for proper statin
selection. Pubmed, The Cochrane Library, Embase, Chinese BioMedicine, and China National
Knowledge Infrastructure databases were systematically searched for eligible publications.
We also manually reviewed the references from all relevant literature for more trials.
Only studies that met our predefined inclusion criteria up to March 31, 2015, were
enrolled. Five randomized controlled trials, 4 published in English and 1 in Chinese,
were finally included in our study with a total of 1,556 participants, of whom 772
were in the rosuvastatin group and 784 in the atorvastatin group. The dose ratios
of rosuvastatin versus atorvastatin were 1:2 in all included trials. Pooling across
the studies demonstrated that compared with atorvastatin, rosuvastatin administration
further reduced the total atheroma volume (weighted mean difference [WMD] −1.61 mm3, 95% confidence interval [CI] −2.70 to −0.52; p = 0.004) and percent atheroma volume
(WMD −0.34%, 95% CI −0.64 to −0.03; p = 0.03) and improved the lumen volume more significantly
(WMD 2.10 mm3, 95% CI 0.04 to 4.17; p = 0.046). The comparative regression of plaques was not different
across subgroups. In conclusion, rosuvastatin is superior to atorvastatin in the reversion
of coronary atherosclerotic plaques.
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Article Info
Publication History
Published online: August 31, 2015
Accepted:
August 4,
2015
Received in revised form:
August 4,
2015
Received:
June 22,
2015
Footnotes
Drs Qian and Wei contributed equally to this work.
This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China to Yanggan Wang [NSFC, Grant Nos. 81270304 and 81420108004].
See page 1526 for disclosure information.
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© 2015 Elsevier Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
