An extensive federal study claims that diabetics, who lower their blood pressure and cholesterol to below current guidelines, are not bringing down the risks of their heart problems, which is a very common misconception.

Heads of experts all over the world have been turning to the results from the ACCORD survey, short for Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes, which commenced a decade ago. The goal of the extensive study was to determine whether lowering blood pressure, blood sugar, and blood fat, below the recommended norm, would lead to a reduction in heart attack rates and strokes in diabetic people or not.

The results of the study, as reported by William Cushman, MD, of the VA Medical Center in Memphis, Tennessee, suggests that lowering systolic blood pressure to 120, rather than the generally recommended 140, did not lower the risks of heart attack or stroke in diabetic patients.

Henry Ginsberg, MD, of Columbia University in New York City, said, "The results showed that adding the fat-busting drug TriCor to standard cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins did not reduce the odds of heart attacks either".

The study was previously presented at the 59th Annual Conference of the American College of Cardiology and was released online by The New England Journal of Medicine.