UT Health Newsroom: PREVENTABLE trial at UT Health San Antonio recruiting 450 volunteers.
Can a statin maintain the health of adults 75 and older?
UT Health San Antonio’s Sam and Ann Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies announced Nov. 20 that enrollment is open for a new clinical trial called PREVENTABLE. The study will investigate whether taking atorvastatin, a drug commonly used to lower cholesterol also called Lipitor®, can help adults age 75 and older maintain health by preventing dementia, disability and heart disease.
The study, which aims to be one of the largest ever conducted in older adults, will include more than 20,000 participants across the U.S., including 450 from San Antonio. The study will randomize participants without heart disease or dementia to receive either atorvastatin or placebo. The placebo looks like the study drug but has no medicine in it. Researchers will follow participants for up to five years and test their memory, thinking and physical abilities, and monitor them for events such as heart attacks or strokes.
Study participation will be easy and efficient. Researchers will follow participants using electronic health records and Medicare data, and with study visits over the telephone. Study drug will be shipped directly to participants’ homes every three months.
The Barshop Institute at UT Health San Antonio is one of the first PREVENTABLE study sites to be activated, said principal investigator Nicolas Musi, MD, institute director and professor of medicine in the university’s Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine.