New Guidelines for Heart Disease Could Mean More Statin Prescriptions

The American College of Cardiology recently revised its guidelines on risk factors for heart disease and stroke, which loosened the eligibility for those with heart disease to be treated with cholesterol-reducing statins.

The use of statins could become more common overall, especially after yesterday when UK researchers published a study that showed the drug's potential effectiveness in slowing the progression of multiple sclerosis. The new guidelines suggest that if someone's risk of developing heart disease is 7.5% or higher, they might benefit from taking statins.

However, researchers at Duke University predict that the increased prevalence of statins could simply lead to overtreatment. They found that over 13 million people would be eligible to receive statins, but many of them (10.4 million) would be taking them to prevent a future heart attack, which might not be necessary.

This poses a problem, because patients who have a family history of heart disease or possess potential risk factors for developing heart disease are the hardest to treat, but they could be given statins to prevent risks. But should someone be taking medications if nothing is wrong? The American Heart Association breaks down which patients would benefit.

The new risk calculator that will be provided to doctors is designed to determine what treatments would be suitable for specific heart patients. It's used to determine 10-year risk for heart attack and stroke in patients aged 40-79. Because heart disease is responsible for 25% of deaths in the United States, the AMA hopes to go beyond practical treatments and prevent any symptoms from even surfacing.

"The goal is not to get more people on statins," said American Heart Association President Mariell Jessup, MD, FAHA, FACC, FESC, Medical Director of the Penn Medicine Heart and Vascular Center at the University of Pennsylvania. "The goal is to help Americans reduce their risk of cardiovascular diseases and stroke.  The goal is to help people live longer, healthier lives.  This means we have to treat the right people - those at the highest risk who have been shown to benefit," she concluded in this AHA blog.

The new guidelines were approved in November, so it's likely doctors will carefully evaluate their patients before writing statin prescriptions. To read more about heart disease and statins, visit this CNN News article.