Experts say the international guidelines on who is eligible for statins may need reworking after the publication of a study finding that people at low risk of heart disease may benefit from cholesterol medication.

The Jupiter trial results, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, studied nearly 18,000 people and found that people with normal cholesterol levels had their risk of a heart attack reduced by 54% and stroke by 48% after taking the drug.

A reduction was even seen in those with the lowest chance of a cardiovascular event over the next decade according to the researchers.

“The combined risk of heart attack, stroke and heart-related death fell by 47%, as did the odds of undergoing surgical procedures,” reports the Daily Telegraph.

There is some scepticism about the results, given that the drug used – rosuvastatin (marketed under the name Crestor) – is made by AstraZeneca, who funded the study.

Patients in the trial had cholesterol levels below those usually indicating a need for treatment and had no other signs of heart disease; but did have a higher C-reactive protein level, which is an indicator of inflammation and is thought to signal future cardiovascular problems.

The results have seen AstraZeneca’s stock rise 3.2% in London according to Bloomberg.

Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons professor of medicine Lori Mosca said to Bloomberg, “Are we going to use this like aspirin therapy? This finding is clearly expanding the universe of who should receive cholesterol pills, but we need to carefully evaluate at what point it becomes cost effective to treat the majority of people.”

However the GoozNews site points out that the study’s lead researcher Paul Ridker, owns a patent on the C-reactive protein test, and that it is AstraZeneca’s drug given to patients.

“If they can get two million more ‘apparently healthy men and women’ on [Crestor], it’s an additional $2 billion-plus in sales for AstraZeneca. If they can test 10 million people to find the estimated two million with elevated CRP levels (they had to screen nearly 90,000 people to find the 17,800 eligible for the trial), it’s $200 million in test sales, which, if the royalty is only 1 percent, amounts to a hefty $2 million a year in extra income for Dr. Ridker,” said site author Merrill Goozner.