RESULTS: Question and Answers about the SHARP trial
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What do the results from the SHARP study show?

The main findings of SHARP were:

Why are the results from SHARP important?

People with chronic kidney disease tend to have a very high risk of developing heart
disease or experiencing a stroke. Until now, there has been a lack of information
about how to prevent these conditions in kidney disease patients. The SHARP
results are important because they provide the first reliable evidence that this high
risk of cardiovascular disease can be lowered by reducing blood cholesterol levels.


How important are the results from SHARP?

Chronic kidney disease affects about one in 10 people worldwide. Consequently, it is
likely that the SHARP results will result in cholesterol-lowering treatment being used
widely in this large group of high-risk people who were previously not being given
such treatment. This could lead to at least 250,000 people with chronic kidney
disease avoiding heart attacks, strokes or operations to unblock arteries each year
worldwide.


Are the SHARP results consistent with previous studies?

Yes. A large number of randomized trials had shown previously that reducing low-
density lipoprotein (LDL; or "bad") cholesterol in patients with normal kidney function
reduces the risk of heart attacks, strokes and operations to unblock arteries in
people. Previous trials of cholesterol-lowering in patients with kidney disease have
not been able to demonstrate benefit, but it now seems likely that they were too
small to demonstrate the benefits. The SHARP trial, which studied many more
kidney disease patients, shows that reducing LDL cholesterol levels safely produces
comparable benefits to those observed in people with normal kidney function.


Are the results only relevant to kidney patients?

No. The SHARP results are also relevant to people who don't have chronic kidney
disease. The combination of ezetimibe and a statin produced similar benefits to
those resulting from the same LDL cholesterol reduction achieved with a high dose
of a statin. Since the lower the cholesterol the bigger the risk reduction, these results
suggest that patients who remain at high risk of major atherosclerotic events despite
maximal statin therapy may benefit further from adding ezetimibe to their current
statin regimen.


What do these results mean for a patient with kidney disease?

Patients with kidney disease should consult their own doctors to find out whether
cholesterol-lowering treatment might be helpful for them. SHARP shows that
lowering cholesterol is beneficial for a wide range of people with chronic kidney
disease, so many patients may now begin cholesterol-lowering therapy.


Is this treatment suitable for all patients with kidney disease?

SHARP included a wide range of different types of patients with less than 50% of
their normal kidney function, and the benefits of lowering cholesterol were similar in
all types of patient studied. Previous studies have shown that lowering cholesterol is
beneficial for people with less severe kidney disease, so such treatment is likely to
be beneficial for the majority of people with chronic kidney disease.

Were there any adverse effects of treatment?

No. The frequency of serious adverse effects was monitored very intensively during
the SHARP, but there was no evidence that either of the active drugs (ezetimibe and
simvastatin) in the study tablets caused any serious side effects in the muscles, liver,
pancreas, kidneys, or any other organs. In particular, the previous suggestion that
ezetimibe might cause cancer was not supported by the SHARP results.


Do kidney disease patients need to take the particular treatments studied in SHARP, or could they take other cholesterol-lowering treatments?

The key thing is to ensure that any cholesterol-lowering treatment used produces a
big reduction in LDL (or "bad") cholesterol. Use of the combination of ezetimibe
10mg daily plus simvastatin 20mg daily can reduce LDL cholesterol by an average of
1.3 mmol/L (50mg/dL). An LDL cholesterol reduction of this size could also be
achieved by high doses of one of the newer, more potent, statins (e.g. atorvastatin or
rosuvastatin). SHARP indicates that this reduction in LDL cholesterol would reduce
the risk of major atherosclerotic events by about one quarter, and shows that the
combination of ezetimibe 10 mg daily plus simvastatin 20 mg daily is safe.


Is there anything else that can be done to lower cholesterol levels?

Reducing the fat content of one's diet can reduce cholesterol, but this is unlikely to
be as effective as taking medication to lower cholesterol. Moreover, people with
kidney disease are often instructed to follow very specific diets, so they should NOT
change their diet without consulting their dietician or kidney doctor.

Can people who took part in SHARP find out whether they received active cholesterol-lowering treatment or dummy "placebo" treatment?

We do not plan to tell participants routinely what they received. The main reason for
not doing so is that it minimises the risk of bias in the assessment of any long-term
follow-up of their health. (Someone's knowledge of which treatment they had may
affect what they later report.) But, if the kidney specialist (nephrologist) caring for a
patient who was in SHARP definitely wants to find out what treatment their patient
received, they will be able to do so.

What happens next?

It is planned to publish the main study findings in a leading medical journal in early
2011. Further information about any such publications will be posted on the SHARP
website (www.sharpinfo.org).