Data from: Statin therapy in acute cardioembolic stroke with no guidance-based indication

<p><b>Objective</b> It is uncertain if patients with cardioembolic stroke and absence of a guidance-based indication for statin therapy should be administered a statin for prevention of subsequent vascular events. This study was performed to determine whether the statin therapy is beneficial to prevent major vascular events in this population.</p> <p><b>Methods</b> Using a prospective multicenter stroke registry database, we identified acute cardioembolic stroke patients who were hospitalized between 2008 and 2015. Patients who had other established indications for statin therapy according to current guideline were excluded. Major vascular event was defined as a composite of stroke recurrence, myocardial infarction and vascular death. We performed frailty model analysis with the robust sandwich variance estimator using the stabilized inverse probability of treatment weighting method to estimate hazard ratios of statin therapy on outcomes.</p> <p><b>Results </b>Of 6,124 cardioembolic stroke patients, 2,888 (male, 44.6%; mean age, 75.3 years with 95% confidence interval 74.8-75.8) were eligible; and 1,863 (64.5%) were on statin therapy during hospitalization. After a median follow-up of 359 days, cumulative incidences of major vascular events were 9.3% in the statin users and 20.5% in the non-users (p &lt;0.001 by log-rank test). The adjusted hazard ratios of statin therapy was 0.39 (95% confidence interval, 0.31-0.48) for major vascular events; 0.81 (0.57-1.16) for stroke recurrence; 0.28 (0.21-0.36) for vascular death; and 0.53 (0.45-0.61) for all-cause death, respectively.</p> <p><b>Conclusion</b> Starting statin during acute stage of ischemic stroke may reduce the risk of major vascular events, vascular death and all-cause death in cardioembolic stroke patients with no guidance-based indication for statin.</p>