Dr Annika Bergquist
Simvastatin in PSC
Awarded to Professor Annika Bergquist
Senior consultant at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden
The total grant awarded is £50,160
Duration of award: 5 years
Award details: Could Simvastatin (a drug commonly used to lower cholesterol) be used to treat PSC?
Summary
PSC Support has awarded £51,060 to a leading expert on PSC in Sweden, Professor Bergquist, to help fund her study on how an existing drug called Simvastatin (a type of drug used to lower cholesterol, known as a “statin”) could be used to help people with PSC.
This study is extremely exciting for two reasons:
- it is investigating a possible treatment for PSC; and
- the drug being studied is already in use and is known for being safe in other patient groups. This means that, if the drug is proven to help people with PSC, it could be made available to PSC patients much quicker than a completely new drug.
Background
Despite a great deal of research into people with PSC, there still is no proven treatment that may cure or slow down the progression of the disease.
This trial focuses on a new area of interest in the scientific community - statins in chronic (long term) liver disease. Professor Bergquist has already completed a study which looked at medical records from a database in Sweden to compare how long it took for PSC patients to experience serious complications with their disease, compared with PSC patients who were on statins. She found that people with PSC who were taking statins did better with their PSC than those who were not on statins.
With this research, Professor Bergquist will test her findings and prove if taking a daily tablet of Simvastatin (a type of statin) does in fact improve prognosis (long term health) in people with PSC.
What will Dr Bergquist do?
Professor Bergquist has already enrolled all 550 people with PSC who are required for this trial. This has been funded by the Swedish Research Council. The additional funding from PSC Support will allow Professor Bergquist to continue this exciting trial - to fully recruit the 550 patients needed and monitor them over a period of 5 years.
In order to prove if Simvastatin is an effective treatment for PSC, the study will have two groups of PSC patients: one will take Simvastatin daily, and the other will take a dummy drug, known as a “placebo” (“the PSC control group”). The split will be 50/50 and neither the doctors nor patients will know which group they are in.
Patients will be recruited across 13 hospitals in Sweden, and be assessed at regular intervals over a period of five years. At the end of this study, the information gathered from the two groups of patients will be compared, and Professor Bergquist will be able to conclude if the group taking the Simvastatin had a lower risk of a serious compilation of PSC than the PSC control group.
Why is this study important?
Professor Bergquist’s research is so important because we desperately need to find a treatment or cure for people with PSC. Supporting and accelerating access to potential PSC treatments is vital for our community.
With the grant from PSC Support I am aiming to complete the PiSCATIN trial!
This is important because we desperately need a treatment for PSC to slow down disease progression.
I am interested in PSC because I believe this is the most interesting area of hepatology and have always worked with different aspects of this disease!"
- Dr Annika Bergquist
Mission 2030 is an ambitious challenge and we can’t do it alone. We need your help to find the breakthrough people with PSC so desperately need.
It’s time we found effective treatments for PSC
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