Articles related to PHARMACOTHERAPY

These recommendations “attempt to provide practical guidance for clinicians and patients regarding the use of nonstatin therapies to further reduce ASCVD risk in situations not covered by the guideline until such time as the scientific evidence base expands.”

The USPSTF comes to the conclusion that statin use has at least a moderate net benefit for adults aged 40 to 75 who have no prior history of CVD, at least one CVD risk factor, and an estimated 10-year CVD event risk of 10% or greater. There is at least a marginal net benefit from using statins to prevent CVD events and all-cause mortality in adults aged 40 to 75 who have no prior history of CVD, at least one of these risk factors, and an estimated 10-year CVD event risk of 7.5% to less than 10%. Still, is the evidence enough?

A conversation with Ann Marie Navar, MD, PhD, associate professor of cardiology at UT Southwestern in Dallas, Texas and associate editor of JAMA Cardiology, who discusses common statin-related myths, the safety of statin therapy, and reliable sources of information for patients.

In a look “Beyond the Guidelines,” a preventive cardiologist and a general internist discuss their approach in the case of a 57-year-old woman with high cholesterol and a family history of heart disease.

A meta-analysis published in JAMA Internal Medicine has concluded that the link between statin-induced LDL lowering and reduction of CV outcomes may not be as robust as previously assumed. According to the researchers, the absolute risk reduction associated with statin use for all-cause mortality was 0.8% (95% CI, 0.4-1.2), whereas for MI it was 1.3% (95% CI, 0.9-1.7) and for stroke it was 0.4% (95% CI, 0.2-0.6). Absolute risk reduction figures were slightly higher for secondary prevention than for primary prevention.

Publication: JAMA Internal MedicineDesign: Retrospective cohort study of more than 83,000 propensity-scored matched pairs over a 12-year period.Results: Diabetes progression was significantly greater among diabetes patients using statins vs. those not using statins.