Statin therapy may even benefit healthy – study

The findings suggest everyone over a certain age should qualify for statin therapy, say experts. Many doctors already take the pills, which lower levels of cholesterol in the blood.

The authors of the new research, which appears in The Lancet, say the findings suggest international treatment guidelines for statins should be reconsidered.

But NHS prescriptions of the drugs are restricted to patients judged to have at least a 20 per cent risk of a so-called “major vascular event” in the next 10 years.

A major vascular event can include a non-fatal heart attack, stroke, or surgery to bypass or unblock damaged arteries.

To conduct the “meta-analysis” study, they pooled together data on 175,000 patients who took part in 27 separate randomised trials. Participants were grouped into one of five categories of five-year major vascular event risk.

Statins were found to reduce the risk of serious vascular events by more than a fifth (21 per cent) for each unit reduction in levels of harmful cholesterol. The pattern was repeated in each of the five groups studied, including those people at lowest risk.

In individuals where the five-year chance of a major event was less than 10 per cent, the already small risk was significantly lowered, even in people with no history of vascular disease.This was mainly due to reduced numbers of heart attacks and surgical operations.

Researchers measured millimoles per litre (mmol/L) reductions of “bad” low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol in the blood and found that every one mmol/L lowering of LDL cholesterol reduced the risk of major vascular events by 21 per cent “irrespective of age, sex, baseline LDL cholesterol or previous vascular disease, and of vascular and all-cause mortality”.

In people with a five-year risk of major vascular events lower than 10 per cent, each unit lowering of LDL cholesterol reduced event incidence by about 11 per 1,000 individuals over five years.

Benefit exceeds hazards

The authors, led by Professor Colin Baigent, from Oxford University, wrote: “This benefit greatly exceeds any known hazards of statin therapy.

“Under present guidelines, such individuals would not typically be regarded as suitable for LDL-lowering statin therapy. The present report suggests, therefore, that these guidelines might need to be reconsidered.”

The research found no evidence that statins increased cancer incidence or deaths from non-vascular causes.

June Davison, senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, which part-funded the study, said: “Those who already have heart disease, or are at high risk, are offered statins because it’s well established they help to lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart disease.

“This large-scale research found even people at low risk of heart disease could benefit from statin therapy. The findings will help to inform policy and treatment guidelines in the future.”