International Circulation: Some data showed that anti-inflammation drugs or statins might benefit patients with CABG. What’s your opinion on this?

Gerhard Hindricks :  At the end of the day it is open to me and don’t have an opinion one way or the other.  If you ask me what I would expect it would be that I expect these patients would profit from statin therapy. 

International Circulation: Is there any special patient population that might be benefited from certain kinds of upstream drugs?

Gerhard Hindricks :  We have learned over the last couple years that not every patient with atrial fibrillation is the same.  It makes sense to approach patients with atrial fibrillation on a more or less individual basis with regard to the upstream therapies.  As far as I see the data that we have now， I would expect that the upstream therapies would be most beneficial for patients with some degree of cardiovascular disease.  For example， there is some linkage between atrial hypertension and the occurrence of atrial fibrillation.  There is also a linkage between the occurrence of coronary artery disease and the occurrence of atrial fibrillation.  For these patients I see the particular importance of upstream therapy for all of these drugs.  If we look to patients with so-called “lone” atrial fibrillation in the absence of any cardiovascular disease， evidence is much fewer that upstream therapy will be effective in this small subset of patients.