Effect of pravastatin on cerebral infarcts and white matter lesions

The authors examined the effect of pravastatin 40 mg daily on the progression of ischemic brain lesions using repeated brain MRI. After a mean treatment period of 33 months, there was an increase in total ischemic lesion load of 1.1 cm(3) (p < 0.001) in the 270 placebo-treated subjects and 1.1 cm(3) (p < 0.001) in the 265 pravastatin-treated subjects. There was no difference between the two treatment groups (p = 0.73).