Statins Can Boost Brain Hemorrhage Risk After Stroke

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Other factors that increased the risk of brain hemorrhage included being older, having had a previous hemorrhagic stroke, being male and having high blood pressure. In fact, people with severe high blood pressure had more than six times the risk of hemorrhagic stroke compared with people with normal blood pressure.

For most patients, statins such as Lipitor do help prevent strokes and heart attacks, Goldstein said. "For patients who have not had a stroke or TIA within the past six months -- there is no risk of hemorrhage," he said.

One expert agreed that patients who have had a hemorrhagic stroke should probably not be given statins.

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"If there is any message that neurologists' will take home from this paper it is that 'I'm going to be a little more pensive about using statins in someone who has presented with a hemorrhage to the brain,'" said Dr. Wade Smith, director of the Neurovascular Service at the University of California, San Francisco.

Smith noted that the most important factor in preventing a second stroke is controlling blood pressure. "We as doctors and as patients need to be very aggressive about making our blood pressures normal after stroke," he said. "That's the most effective way of preventing a second stroke."

Another expert said the doses of Lipitor given in the trial were much higher than most people take.

"It is important to note that most patients on statins are on a much lower dose than that in the SPARCL study," said Dr. Majaz Moonis, director of the stroke prevention clinic at the University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center in Worcester. "In our own two independent retrospective study analyses including about 2,500 patients on lower doses of statins, more in line with what patients take, there was no evident increase risk of hemorrhage," he added.

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