Conditions: Coronary Artery Disease
Keywords: YELLO Atorvastatin Simvastatin Rosuvastatin lipid therapy Statin therapy Coronary artery disease CHD
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: PARALLEL
Enrollment: 87
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
The study will assess the regression of yellow plaque content of the lipid pool after aggressive lipid therapy by utilizing NIR spectroscopy. Statin therapy using Rosuvastatin 10-40 mg will be compared to the statin therapy of either Atorvastatin or Simvastatin. This is a single site study. A total of 100 subjects will randomized, of which 40 will receive intensive lipid therapy (Rosuvastatin 40mg) and 40 will receive standard care lipid lowering therapy.

Detailed description:
Coronary artery disease (CHD) remains to be a leading cause of death in most countries (1) (2). It is well known that reducing cholesterol level by statin therapy is associated with significant reduction in plaque burden. REVERSAL (3) and ASTEROID (4) trials showed that in patients with coronary artery disease lipid-lowering with atorvastatin or rosuvastatin respectively reduced progression of coronary atherosclerosis and even cause repression of some lesions. CHD clinical events are related to plaque instability due to lipid content within the atherosclerotic plaque. High dose atorvastatin has shown to reduce the plaque lipid contents on serial IVUS analysis at 12 months. Therefore reduction in lipid content and thereby the plaque burden by lipid lowering therapy may stabilize the plaque and reduce cardiovascular events. High sensitivity C-reactive Protein (HsCRP) is an inflammatory biomarker that independently predicts future vascular events. In JUPITER (5) trial rosuvastatin (Crestor) significantly reduced the incidence of major cardiovascular events in apparently healthy people with elevated HsCRP. IVUS was utilized to demonstrate change in coronary artery vessel wall morphology over a relatively short period of time, but provided no data on the lipid content in the vessel wall. The application of NIR spectroscopy to identify lipid deposition within coronary arteries has been validated in ex vivo studies. Infrared spectra are collected as follows: Light of discrete wavelengths from a laser is directed onto the tissue sample via glass fibers. Light scattered from the samples is collected in fibers and launched into a spectrometer. The plot of signal intensity as a function of wavelength was used to develop chemometric models to discriminate lipid-cores from non-atherosclerotic tissue, and from atherosclerotic tissue that is predominantly fibrotic and from blood elements.

Arms:
arm 1: standard-care lipid-lowering therapy: Zocor or Lipitor arm 2: aggressive lipid therapy: Crestor

Interventions: intervention 1: standard of care lipid therapy intervention 2: Aggressive lipid therapy
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: Patients will be randomized in a 1:1 fashion to receive either A) Rosuvastatin (Crestor) 40mg daily, or B) standard-care lipid-lowering therapy.

Zocor, Lipitor \[any dose\] and Crestor \[less than 40mg\] intervention 2: Patients will be randomized in a 1:1 fashion to receive either A) Rosuvastatin (Crestor) 40mg daily, or B) standard-care lipid-lowering therapy.

Protocol document: