A recent study conducted by Columbia University researchers has found that cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins can possibly reduce the probabilities of severe heart diseases in individuals with sleep apnea.

Sleep apnea is a typical condition present in older adults. At its wake, people face difficulties in falling asleep which in turn results in hypertension and eventually a spread of cardiac diseases akin to heart arrhythmias (irregular heartbeats), heart attacks and strokes.

The study, published within the journal Annals of the American Thoracic Society, suggests the medication could be useful even for individuals who use continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) devices to facilitate a standard sleeping order, as per Medical Express.

CPAP provides restful sleep to those with obstructive sleep apnea by reducing daytime fatigue, but recent clinical trials proved it doesn’t have the potential to enhance heart health as physicians wrongly hypothesized.

Due to this fact, doctors felt the immediate have to search for a greater alternative because the condition triples the probabilities of heart disease, stroke, or other cardiovascular effects. The study, led by Sanja Jelic, associate professor of drugs at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, found statins to be one such method.

The study involved 87 individuals with recently-detected sleep apnea, who use CPAP. The patients were randomly given either statins or a placebo. The researchers noted that statins and never CPAP protected the blood vessels from the harmful inflammatory changes that occur in individuals with sleep apnea.

As a part of the study, researchers noted that lower levels of cholesterol can stabilize the degrees of CD59 protein–a component that keeps inflammation in check in blood vessels by protecting cells against complement (a bunch of proteins that promote inflammation) activity. Doctors noted that the study participants had more stabilized levels of CD59 of their blood after 4 weeks of cholesterol-lowering statin therapy, which CPAP alone couldn’t do.

“The effect we found with statins is vital,” says Jelic, in response to Sleep Review. “Inflammation within the blood vessels is a key step within the progression of heart problems, so anything that we will do to stabilize CD59 in these patients is prone to be useful for heart health.”

The doctors also came upon that CPAP does more harm than good because it increases angiopoietin-2 levels within the blood. Angiopoietin-2 is a protein linked to increased inflammation and other heart diseases. In the course of the study, statins lowered angiopoietin-2 levels in patients with sleep apnea.

“We still imagine CPAP could be very useful because it improves sleep and reduces daytime fatigue,” Jelic says. “But CPAP also seems to have negative effects on the cardiovascular system. We’d like to analyze whether we should always use more conservative airway pressures or other less-utilized treatments like oral appliances to treat patients with obstructive sleep apnea.”

Further clinical trials of the statins therapy are required to provide a definitive verdict on its effectiveness in curing heart diseases, Jelic said. Currently, Statins are prescribed to only 8-13% of the general variety of patients with sleep apnea.