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Medical professionals have debated the benefits of statins in recent years. Marco Gerber/Getty Images
  • A national task force has updated its recommendations on the use of statins to help lower the risk of cardiovascular disease.
  • The task force states that people between 40 and 75 years of age with some heart disease risks can receive moderate benefits from taking statins.
  • They added that the evidence is inconclusive on the benefits for people over age 75 with no history of heart disease.
  • Some experts say that statins shouldn’t be a first option. They say lifestyle changes such as diet and exercise should be considered first.

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for men, women, and people of most racial and ethnic groups in the United States.

This week, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) published its recommendations on the use of statin drugs for the prevention of heart disease in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

The updated guidelines report statins provide at least moderate benefits in helping reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease for some older adults.

In addition, a study released today reports that stopping statin treatment early may substantially reduce lifetime protection against heart disease.

The researchers noted that a significant share of the benefits from statins occur later in life.

The findings were presented at the European Society of Cardiology’s annual meeting. The study hasn’t been peer-reviewed or published yet.

Statins are drugs that work by blocking a substance your body needs to make cholesterol.

These medications have been linked to a lower risk of heart disease and stroke. They may help stabilize the plaques on blood vessel walls and reduce the risk of certain blood clots.

To update its 2016 recommendation, the USPSTF studied the benefits and harms of statins for reducing cardiovascular disease-related morbidity and all-cause mortality.

The USPSTF retrieved its information from more than a dozen clinical trials nationwide with more than 70,000 participants.

From the data in those trials, the USPSTF concluded “with moderate certainty” that statin use for the prevention of cardiovascular events and all-cause mortality has “at least a moderate net benefit” in adults ages 40 to 75 years with no history of heart disease and who have one or more risk factors such as dyslipidemia, diabetes, hypertension, or smoking and an estimated 10-year CVD event risk of 10% or greater.

The USPSTF also concluded “with moderate certainty” that statin use for the prevention of cardiovascular events and all-cause mortality has “at least a small net benefit” in adults ages 40 to 75 years with no history of heart disease and who have 1 or more of these CVD risk factors and an estimated 10-year CVD event risk of 7.5% to less than 10%.

The USPSTF noted that “the evidence is insufficient to determine the balance of benefits and harms of statin use for the primary prevention of cardiovascular events and mortality in adults 76 years or older with no history of cardiovascular disease.”

“Our statement is focused on statins. But it’s important to understand that we are not recommending this for everyone, just adults 40 to 75 who have one or more risk factors and are at high risk for that first stroke or heart attack,” Dr. John B. Wong, the interim chief scientific officer and a primary care clinician in the Department of Medicine at Tufts Medical Center in Massachusetts, told Healthline.

“There’s strong evidence from the trials that statins help patients avoid that first heart attack and that first stroke. We also found that those who took statins lived longer, they had a higher survival rate,” added Wong, who joined the task force in 2018.

In recent years, the medical community has debated the use of statins.

Some say their benefits outweigh their side effects while others say the cholesterol-lowering medications should only be prescribed for people with higher risks of heart disease.

Dr. Elizabeth Klodas, the founder of Preventive Cardiology Clinic in Minnesota, told Healthline that statins should not necessarily be the first option.

“I prescribe statins all the time. But when I look at the recommendation and I see 40-to-75-year-old adults who don’t have heart disease but have one or more risk factors, well, that is most people who are 40 to 75. And that is the issue. We are using medications to cover up lifestyle factors,” she explained,

Klodas said that “if something is caused by smoking, poor diet, or inactivity, step one should be to quit smoking, eat better, and/or move around more before putting someone on a drug.”

“I saw a great cartoon. It was a picture of a group of doctors mopping up the wet floor, and behind them, the sink tap was still open. The solution is to stop the tap,” Klodas added.

This, Klodas said, is how she works with her patients.

“Some of them end up on statins, and that is perfectly OK. But that is not the goal,” she said. “The idea is to minimize the ill-effects of drugs, and pursue a positive lifestyle.”