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TUESDAY, April 16, 2019 (HealthDay News) — More than half of patients initiating statin therapy have a suboptimal low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) response within 24 months, according to a study published online April 15 in Heart<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Ralph Kwame Akyea, M.B., Ch.B., from the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, and colleagues conducted a prospective study of 165,411 primary care patients who were free of cardiovascular disease (CVD) before statin initiation. Participants had at least one pretreatment LDL-C within 12 months before and one posttreatment LDL-C within 24 months after statin initiation.<\/p>\n
The researchers found that 51.2 percent of patients had a suboptimal response to statin therapy within 24 months, defined as a reduction of <40 percent in baseline LDL-C. During 1,077,299 person-years of follow-up, there were 22,798 CVD events: 12,142 and 10,656 in suboptimal and optimal responders, respectively. Compared with optimal responders, suboptimal responders had an unadjusted hazard ratio of 1.17 for incident CVD; the hazard ratio was 1.22 after adjustment for age and baseline untreated LDL-C. The subhazard ratios for unadjusted and adjusted cumulative incidence function of CVD were 1.13 and 1.19, respectively, when competing risks were considered.<\/p>\n
“Effective implementation of guidelines among health care practitioners and the general population has been a challenge for a long time,” write the authors of an accompanying editorial. “Both physicians and patients should be targets for approaches aiming at improving adherence to guidelines.”<\/p>\n
Abstract\/Full Text (subscription or payment may be required)<\/a><\/p>\n Editorial (subscription or payment may be required)<\/a><\/p>\n <\/i><\/p>\n