New ACC-AHA cholesterol guidelines significantly increase potential eligibility for statin treatment

Commentary on: Pencina MJ, Navar-Boggan AM, D’Agostino RB, et al.. Application of new cholesterol guidelines to a population-based sample. N Engl J Med 2014;370:1422–31. Context In 2013, new guidelines for the treatment of cholesterol for the prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD) were issued by the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association (ACC-AHA), based on a systematic review of lipid lowering trials and meta-analyses evaluating treatment impact on CVD morbidity and mortality, and quantitated adverse effects of lipid-lowering therapy.1 Many of these trials were reported after publication of the NIH-issued Third Adult Treatment Panel (ATPIII) lipid-lowering guidelines.2 The new guidelines feature modified eligibility criteria for cholesterol-lowering treatment based on estimation of benefits and harms of therapy in specific population subsets, and recommend use of a new risk calculator which is based on pooled data from four epidemiologic cohorts and uses 10-year...
Source: Evidence-Based Medicine - Category: Internal Medicine Authors: Tags: Epidemiologic studies, Drugs: cardiovascular system, Stroke, Diet, Ischaemic heart disease Practice guideline Source Type: research