CHICAGO (Reuters) – Apparently healthy people with normal or even low cholesterol levels might benefit as much from taking statin drugs as people with high cholesterol, US researchers said this week.

They studied people with normal cholesterol readings but high levels of C-reactive protein – a marker of inflammation – and found statins reduced the risk of heart attacks, clogged arteries and other problems in this group as well as they did among people with high cholesterol.

Most people are not routinely screened for C-reactive protein, but the researchers argue that it may be time to start testing for it in the hopes of preventing heart attacks in people who might otherwise go untreated. "This paper provides what we think is pretty persuasive evidence that the time may be at hand for a shift in how we go about preventing heart disease," said Dr. Paul Ridker of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, whose study appears in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes. Ridker led a major study last year called Jupiter that found giving AstraZeneca's cholesterol fighter Crestor, or rosuvastatin, slashed deaths, heart attacks, strokes and artery-clearing procedures in apparently healthy patients. In the new study, Ridker and colleagues looked to see how the benefits of statin use in people with high C-reactive protein compared with statins in people with high cholesterol. They chose a common yardstick used to help doctors evaluate treatments – a measurement of the number of patients who need to take a drug over time to derive a benefit.Researchers looked at how many patients with low cholesterol and high C-reactive protein would need to take Crestor for five years before the drug prevented a heart attack, stroke or treatment to unblock a clogged artery.