Effects of Xuezhikang in patients with dyslipidemia: a multicenter, randomized, placebo-controlled study.

BACKGROUND: Xuezhikang (XZK) is an extract of fermented red yeast rice that has lipid-lowering properties. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effects of XZK on lipids in subjects with dyslipidemia but no coronary heart disease. METHODS: A total of 116 adults with baseline non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (non-HDL-C) levels of approximately 208 mg/dL and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels of approximately 175 mg/dL were randomized to either placebo or XZK 1200 or 2400 mg daily and treated for 12 weeks. RESULTS: A majority of the patients were white (53.4%) or Asian (37.1%). Daily XZK 1200 mg and 2400 mg for 4 to 12 weeks resulted in statistically significant (P < .001) and clinically meaningful decreases in non-HDL-C (∼24% reduction) and LDL-C (∼27% reduction) compared with placebo. XZK treatment at either dose enabled approximately 50% of subjects to reduce their LDL-C levels by ≥ 30%. Doubling the XZK daily dose from 1200 to 2400 mg at treatment week 8 caused an additional 4.6% reduction in LDL-C. Significant benefits were also observed across secondary efficacy variables, including total cholesterol (TC), apolipoprotein B (Apo B), triglycerides, HDL-C, the TC/HDL-C ratio, and the Apo B/Apo A-I ratio, at treatment week 8 or 12. XZK was safe and well tolerated. Safety and tolerability profiles were similar across treatment groups. Most adverse events were gastrointestinal. No subject experienced myopathy or markedly elevated liver transaminases or creatine kinase. CONCLUSION: Xuezhikang significantly reduced non-HDL-C and LDL-C, and was well tolerated. Further, longer-term studies in more diverse patient populations are needed to corroborate these findings.

[Latent structure model evaluation of syndrome elements and features in 826 hypertriglyceridemia patients].

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate main Chinese medical syndrome elements and features of hypertriglyceridemia patients. METHODS: Using latent structure model (LSM) method, the latent structure diagram of 826 hypertriglyceridemia patients were established. Hypertriglyceridemia syndrome elements and features were interpreted by using latent probability, conditional probability, mutual information, and cumulative information coverage to quantify symptoms/syndromes data,as well as using manual interpretation methods. RESULTS: The accumulative information coverage rate reaching 95% was taken as the judgment standard for major syndrome elements. In the 826 hypertriglyceridemia patients, moderate and severe symptoms/syndromes (with the latent probability being 35% and 60% respectively) were dominant. The syndrome elements mainly included qi deficiency, qi stagnation,fire heat, stasis blood, yin deficiency, and yang deficiency. The main targets were dominated in Xin, Gan, and Shen. CONCLUSION: LSM based syndrome element evaluation method could quantify the association degree of each variable (syndrome element; Chinese medical symptoms) and the occurrence probability.