Niacin + a statin does not add up to benefit

In 2011, federal health officials ended an important government-funded clinical trial designed to test whether taking niacin in addition to a cholesterol-lowering statin might do more to lower heart attack and stroke risk than just taking a statin alone. Interim data indicated that the niacin had no benefit and may have been associated with a small, unexplained increase in stroke risk.

Full results of the AIM-HIGH trial, as it was called, were published several months later in The New England Journal of Medicine. Experts continue to fight over the AIM-HIGH results in that ferocious way that experts often do. Some say the results are strong evidence for not adding niacin to statin therapy. Others are adamant that AIM-HIGH missed the mark because of the way it was designed and that it will take the results of a different trial, dubbed THRIVE, to determine if niacin-statin combinations have cardiovascular benefits.