Polypill helps people stick to heart disease prevention regimens

People are much more likely to take preventive medicines if they're combined in one pill, an international study has found. The findings are published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Taking aspirin, cholesterol-lowering and blood pressure-lowering drugs long-term more than halves heart attack and stroke recurrence. However, only about 50 per cent of people with cardiovascular disease in high-income countries take all recommended preventive medications. In lowand middle-income countries, only five to 20 per cent do. This leaves tens of millions of people undertreated. In the first study to test the impact of a fixed-dose combination pill - called a polypill - in people with cardiovascular disease, 2,004 participants in the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands and India were randomly assigned either the polypill, or their normal combination of medicines.