Antihypertensive Drugs and Pharmacology

treatment. Matched controls were also evaluated. The MannWhitney U test and Wilcoxon test were used for comparisons. Results: The resting release of IL-8 was higher in dyslipidemic patients at baseline when compared with control subjects (p<0.05). One year of treatment significantly reduced IL-8 production (p<0.01). The IL-8 production after 1 year of treatment was reduced to levels which were lower than those observed in control subjects (p<0.01). Moreover, the fMLP-induced IL-8 production was higher in untreated patients than in controls (p<0.05) and was reduced after simvastatin treatment (p<0.01); the values measured at the 1-year follow-up evaluation were lower than those observed in control subjects (p<0.01). Conclusions: Prolonged (1-year) treatment with simvastatin is associated with persistent reduction of the IL-8 production in primed PMNs, therefore consistently reverting the dysregulated pro-inflammatory IL-8 functional response which occurs in the preclinical phase of atherosclerosis.