Proposed pill could add 11-12 years to life span

? If everyone over the age of 55 took a single pill containing six popular ingredients daily, it could extend their lives by a dozen years and dramatically reduce their risk of heart attack or stroke.

In a paper published today in the British Medical Journal, cardiologist Nicholas Wald proposed the creation of what he called a “polypill.” It would contain aspirin, a cholesterol-lowering drug, three blood-pressure drugs, and folic acid.

Such a pill, he wrote, could cut the incidence of heart attacks by 88 percent and strokes by 80 percent. And about a third of the over-55 population would benefit significantly from the polypill, gaining a whopping average of 11 to 12 years of life.

Wald and colleague Matthew Law came up with this combination by analyzing dozens of studies showing the risks and benefits of various drugs.

Such a drug does not exist. And so far, there are neither specific plans to make it, nor estimates of what it might cost.

Still, experts in the United States were impressed by the idea and said it would almost certainly be cheaper to buy one pill than the four or five commonly prescribed to patients now.

“The projections of what it would mean in terms of longevity are not exaggerated,” said nutrition and heart health expert George Blackburn of Harvard Medical School. “It’s a clever new idea that deserves testing.”

“I think these authors should be commended for thinking out of the box,” said Edgar Lichstein, a cardiologist and chairman of the Department of Medicine at Maimonides Medical Center in New York.

Lichstein said that for people who already got good medical care, reducing 4 or 5 pills to one could save money and make life easier, but the big benefit would be to those millions of people who have inadequate medical care or none at all.

Cardiologist Richard Stein, spokesman for the American Heart Assn., also spoke enthusiastically about the concept of putting these drugs together into a polypill.

He said he could envision the pill being perfect for a 60-year-old man with a sedentary lifestyle and mildly elevated blood pressure and cholesterol.

If such an Average Joe walked into Stein’s office, he said, he’d probably prescribe some combination of the components of the polypill.

And the chances are, Mr. Joe would not take all the pills every day, Stein said. Compliance is a major issue, he said, and reducing everything to one pill would make it much more likely that people would actually take their medicine.