Published 20 October 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a2160
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a2160

Letters

What happened to the polypill?

News of the polypill

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Watts asks what happened to the polypill for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease.1 We can provide an answer.

The University of Birmingham and Tehran University of Medical Sciences have completed a randomised controlled trial of a four component polypill in approximately 500 men aged 50 to 79 and women aged 55 to 79. This is a pilot study, with the aim of starting a fully powered clinical trial if this is successful. The polypill consists of aspirin, a statin, an angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor, and a thiazide diuretic. The trial is registered with www.controlled-trials.com.2 We aim to determine the effects of treatment on blood pressure and lipid concentrations. Recruitment began in 2006 in Golestan (northeast Iran), and follow-up was completed earlier this year. We are currently analysing data.

Our pilot study keeps close to the original spirit of the polypill proposed by Wald and Law3 by including only people . . . [Full text of this article]

Tom Marshall, senior lecturer in public health1, on behalf of Fatemeh Malekzadeh, Akram Pourshams, Mina Gharravi, Afshin Aslani, Alireza Nateghi, Mansoor Rastegarpanah, Masoud Khoshnia, G Neil Thomas, Bagher Larijani, Reza Malekzadeh, K K Cheng

1 University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT

T.P.Marshall@bham.ac.uk


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

A strategy to reduce cardiovascular disease by more than 80%
N J Wald and M R Law
BMJ 2003 326: 1419. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ