science

Heart Protection Study

Heart Protection Study is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Heart Protection Study rather than just read about it. In short: The Heart Protection Study was a randomized controlled trial run by the Clinical Trial Service Unit, and funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the British Heart Foundation (BHF) in the United Kingdom. It studied the use of the cholesterol lowering drug, simvastatin 40 mg and vitamin supplementation (vitamin E, vitamin C and beta carotene) in people who were at risk of cardiovascular disease.

Key takeaways

Heart Protection Study belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Heart Protection Study to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Heart Protection Study from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Heart Protection Study was a randomized controlled trial run by the Clinical Trial Service Unit, and funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the British Heart Foundation (BHF) in the United Kingdom. It studied the use of the cholesterol lowering drug, simvastatin 40 mg and vitamin supplementation (vitamin E, vitamin C and beta carotene) in people who were at risk of cardiovascular disease. It was led by Jane Armitage, an epidemiologist at the Clinical Trial Service Unit.

Results An outline of the study protocol was published in 1999. Initial results were published in 2002, which indicated that vitamins made little difference in modifying cardiovascular risk, but that simvastatin could significantly reduce the risk of cardiovascular events. Further publications, from 2003 and 2004, were concerned with the efficacy of simvastatin in diabetes patients and preventing stroke. A 2005 paper analyses the cost-effectiveness of a prescribing strategy similar to the one employed in the study.

Interpretation The HPS is to date the largest study to investigate the use of statins in the prevention of cardiovascular disease. While there have been concerns about side-effects associated with statins (myopathy and rhabdomyolysis), these were rare in this study. The number needed to treat in the study was 57 to postpone one death and 19 to prevent one cardiovascular "event" (in those taking the drug simvastatin for 5 years). There was no mortality benefit in women with a statistical "p-value" that did not reach significance (0.08) while the Kaplan-Meier mortality curves, for men and women separately, have not been published as of 2016. Cancer risk was not significantly lower in the treatment group; in fact, there was no difference except for non-melanoma skin cancers, wherein the placebo group had a barely-significant lower risk of diagnosis. No worsening of lung disease was found, an initial concern with statin drugs, and simvastatin did not decrease osteoporosis.

Pharmaceutical funding £5.5M plus drug supply was received from Merck and £5.5M plus drug supply from Roche.

See also HDL-Atherosclerosis Treatment Study West of Scotland Coronary Prevention Study Scandinavian Simvastatin Survival Study

References

Further reading Study homepage at the Clinical Trial Service Unit Bandolier condensation of the HPS results

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Heart Protection Study

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Heart Protection Study claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Heart Protection Study before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Heart Protection Study ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Heart Protection Study

In research: Heart Protection Study appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Heart Protection Study in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Heart Protection Study is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Cardiology, Clinical trials related to cardiology, Epidemiological study projects, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Heart Protection Study outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Heart Protection Study in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Heart Protection Study means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Heart Protection Study out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Heart Protection Study in simple terms?

Why does Heart Protection Study matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Heart Protection Study?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Heart Protection Study.