New Statin Prescribing Approach Could Reduce Heart Disease Rates

A research team has developed a new individualized approach to determining which patients would most benefit from the use of statins, focusing on lower-risk individuals with equal expected benefit as high-risk individuals.

Current guidelines recommend statin treatment in patients based on their predicted cardiovascular risk without the consideration of expected benefit.
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To explore whether lower-risk individuals might also benefit from these medications, researchers conducted a study of 2134 participants representing 71.8 statin-eligible Americans. They compared participants using 2 methods: a 10-year risk-based approach and an individualized benefit approach.

Overall, the risk-based approach identified 15 million Americans eligible for statin treatment, whereas, the benefit-based approach identified identified 24.6 million. The individuals identified by the benefit-based approach had either the same or greater expected benefit from statin use as the higher-risk individuals. The group included younger participants with higher LDL levels.

“An individualized statin benefit approach can identify lower-risk individuals who have equal or greater expected benefit from statins in primary prevention than higher-risk individuals. This may help develop guideline recommendations that better identify individuals who meaningfully benefit from statin therapy,” they concluded.