NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Among patients with metabolic syndrome and mixed dyslipidemia, treatment with fenofibric acid in combination with a statin reduces the prevalence of metabolic syndrome more than does either agent alone.

Dr. Harold E. Bays, with the Louisville Metabolic and Atherosclerosis Research Center in Kentucky, and colleagues report the findings in Diabetes Care published online June 23.

Fenofibric acid is the active moiety of fenofibrate, the researchers note. They randomly assigned 2190 patients with metabolic syndrome to fenofibric acid plus low-dose or moderate-dose statin, fenofibric acid alone, or various doses of statin alone.

After 12 weeks, the prevalence of metabolic syndrome in the low-dose and moderate-dose combination arms fell by 35.7% and 35.9%, respectively. The prevalence was reduced 25.7% with fenofibric acid monotherapy, and by 13.8% – 15.5% with different doses of statins given alone.

“The main message is that fenofibric acid plus statins reduced the prevalence of metabolic syndrome,” said Dr. Bays via email. “The reason metabolic syndrome was reduced with fenofibric acid plus statins was mainly through improvements in triglyceride and high density lipoprotein levels.”

Mean glucose levels rose with statin monotherapy, but this was mostly offset by the addition of fenofibric acid, resulting in essentially no change in fasting blood glucose.

“The potential glucose neutral or mild glucose lowering effect of fenofibric acid in this analysis is similar to some other reports of fenofibrate, and is likely to be no more clinically meaningful than the slight rise in glucose sometimes reported with statins,” Dr. Bays commented.

He and his colleagues conclude that fenofibric acid combined with statins produces greater improvement in multiple metabolic parameters and greater reductions in the percent of patients meeting diagnostic criteria for metabolic syndrome, compared to either agent alone.

Abbott, which makes Trilipix, a choline salt formulation of fenofibric acid, sponsored the study.

Reference:

http://care.diabetesjournals.org

Diabetes Care 2010.