Inhibition of platelet-rich arterial thrombus in vivo: acute antithrombotic effect of intravenous HMG-CoA reductase therapy.

Objective: To test the hypothesis that statins will acutely inhibit platelet thrombus formation, intravenous lovastatin was assessed in our well-characterized porcine carotid injury model.

Methods And Results: The first carotid artery was crush-injured and harvested after 30 minutes. Pigs then received intravenous lovastatin (100 microg/kg bolus+100 microg/kg/h infusion, n=6) or saline (n=11) before injury of the second carotid artery.