Taking statin pills doesn’t seem to make the fatty buildup in your neck arteries bigger or smaller, or change the space inside the artery—even after a year or more of use.

Taking statin pills for over a year can shrink the fatty, dangerous core inside artery plaques in the neck, making them less likely to rupture and cause a stroke.

Even without niacin, statins alone can shrink plaque in the neck arteries of older adults with heart disease, as long as their bad cholesterol is kept low.

Stronger statins seem to calm artery inflammation better than weaker ones, based on scans that show how much sugar inflamed cells are using.

Statins do not induce significant regression of established atherosclerotic plaque but reduce plaque progression and enhance plaque stability by lowering LDL cholesterol exposure to arterial walls.

Taking statins may help calm down inflammation in the walls of arteries, which can be seen on a special scan that tracks sugar use by inflamed cells.