Cardiovascular Diseases

Lipid Lowering Beneficial Regardless of Age

A contemporary primary prevention cohort study and a systematic review and meta-analysis showed that older people with elevated LDL cholesterol had higher absolute risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (CVD), and lipid lowering was as effective in reducing cardiovascular events as it was in younger ones. The cohort study included 13 779 individuals aged 70–100 years and 77 352 aged 20–69 years in the Danish general population from Nov 25, 2003 to Feb 17, 2015. During mean 7·7 years of follow-up, 1515 individuals had the first myocardial infarction (MI) and 3389 had atherosclerotic CVD. MI and atherosclerotic CVD increased with both higher LDL cholesterol levels and older age. The older people with higher absolute risk benefited the most from lipid lowering for primary prevention compared to younger people with higher relative risk. The meta-analysis included 244 090 patients from 29 trials (predominantly secondary prevention studies), 21 492 (8·8%) were aged at least 75 years, of whom 11 750 (54·7%) were from statin trials, 6209 (28·9%) from ezetimibe trials, and 3533 (16·4%) from PCSK9 inhibitor trials. Median follow-up ranged from 2·2 to 6·0 years. LDL cholesterol lowering significantly reduced the risk of major vascular events (n=3519) in older patients by 26% per 1 mmol/L reduction in LDL cholesterol (risk ratio 0·74), with no statistically significant difference in the risk reduction in patients younger than 75 years (0·85). Among older patients, risk ratios were not statistically different for statin (0·82) and non-statin treatment (0·67). The benefit of LDL cholesterol lowering in older patients was observed for each component of the composite, including cardiovascular death (0.85), MI (0·80), stroke (0·73), and coronary revascularization (0·80). The findings support the cumulative burden of LDL cholesterol over a person’s lifetime, and that available randomized controlled trial evidence has not indicated an upper age threshold beyond which statin therapy does not reduce risk but differ from reports from cohorts enrolled decades ago probably due to favorable changes in life expectancy. Source: https://www.thelancet.com/

hyangiu

Recent Posts

Sugar-Sweetened Beverages and Fruit Juice in Youth Linked to Higher Risk of High BP Later in Life

Children and adolescents who regularly consume sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) and fruit juice may face a…

14 hours ago

Resistance Training Significantly Lowers CVD Risk in Women

Women who consistently performed resistance training had a substantially lower risk of major cardiovascular disease…

7 days ago

Intensive Lifestyle Intervention Reduces Long-Term Multimorbidity in Prediabetes

US Adults with prediabetes who participated in an intensive lifestyle intervention had a significantly lower…

1 week ago

Frailty Modifies the Relationship Between High BP and Dementia Risk in Older Adults

The impact of late-life high blood pressure (BP) on dementia risk appears to depend on…

1 week ago

Recombinant Shingles Vaccine Linked to Lower Dementia Risk

A U.S. study found that receiving the recombinant herpes zoster vaccine (RZV, shingles vaccine) was…

1 week ago

Sugar-Sweetened Beverages Linked to Higher Risk of Liver Cancer Subtypes

A pooled analysis of 11 prospective cohort studies involving more than 1.5 million adults found…

2 weeks ago

This website uses cookies.