Adjunctive statin therapy reduces intracranial hemorrhage and 1-year mortality in patients with atrial fibrillation after acute ischemic stroke: A population-based epidemiological study from Taiwan

Abstract Background Atrial fibrillation (AF)-related stroke causes severe disability and poor prognosis. Adjunctive statin therapy has been recommended for atherosclerotic-related stroke but not AF-related stroke. This study investigated the effects of statin in AF patients who experienced acute ischemic stroke. Methods Data from patients with AF experiencing first-ever ischemic stroke between 2001 and 2010 were collected from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database and categorized into non-statin and statin groups. The statin group was further divided into pre-stroke statin (those who began statin therapy before stroke) and post-stroke statin (those who began statin therapy after stroke) groups. The risks for recurrent ischemic stroke, coronary artery disease (CAD), intracranial hemorrhage (ICH), and 1-year mortality were compared among the groups. Results A total of 43,242 patients were in the non-statin, 2858 in the pre-stroke statin and 4640 in post-stroke statin groups. Comparing the risk for recurrent stroke and CAD among the three groups, the pre-stroke statin and post-stroke statin groups did not exhibit a significant difference compared with the non-statin group. In terms of ICH risk, the statin group had a lower risk for ICH (odds ratio [OR] 0.79, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.68–0.90; p  = 0.0007) compared with the non-statin group. The overall 1-year mortality in both statin subgroups was lower than that in the non-statin group (pre-stroke statin, OR 0.55 [95% CI 0.49–0.61]; p p Conclusions Statin therapy reduced the risk of ICH and 1-year mortality in AF patients who experienced acute ischemic stroke.