Statins should be taken for LIFE, study suggests

One study suggests that statins should be taken out for life.

Patients who suddenly stop taking cholesterol-lowering drugs are at risk of losing much of the protection offered to the heart.

That’s because the main benefits of the cheaper pills aren’t seen until later in life, scientists say.

To reduce the risk of cardiovascular complications due to high blood pressure, approximately 8 million British and 32 million Americans take statins daily.

But more than half of patients are believed to stop taking the drug because of suspected side effects, which can include muscle aches, digestive problems, and headaches.

Lead author Dr Runguo Wu, from Queen Mary University of London, said: ‘Withholding treatment does not appear to be a wise option unless advised by a doctor.’

Statins are a group of drugs that prevent the liver from producing ‘bad’ cholesterol, known as low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol.

Over time, its buildup can lead to hardened and narrowed arteries and heart disease – one of the world’s leading causes of death.

People are given statins currently prescribed if they have been diagnosed with the disease, or have a family history of it.

The tablets, which cost just 20p a pill and are proven to be life-saving, are taken once a day.

Patients who stop taking them may notice that their cholesterol rises back within weeks.

However, due to the concern of side effects, many people stop consuming them or consume them irregularly.

Researchers examined how their effectiveness decreased when patients came off drugs.

They used data from 118,000 participants involved in international statin trials and half a million included in the UK Biobank – a database of medical and genetic records.

They created a mathematical model that calculated the annual risk of heart attack and stroke for each participant.

Experts attempted to calculate what would happen if participants stopped taking daily doses at 80, compared to those who took them for life.

Plus, they compared the five-year delay to statin use.

Benefits were measured in quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) – the additional years of life lived in perfect health.

The findings, to be presented Saturday at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in Barcelona, ​​show that most QALYs due to statins acquired in later life.

Patients who stopped taking the drug in their 80s ‘wiped away a substantial part of the potential benefit’.

People in their fifties with low cardiovascular risk who stopped taking medication at 80 would have three-quarters of the QALYs they had if they kept taking the drug.

And those who are at high heart risk and stop their daily statin tablets at 80 lose a third of their extra healthy years that the drug provides.

Those who had a low cardiovascular risk and delayed taking statins by five years lost just two percent of the benefits of the drug.

But high-risk people who stopped taking it lost seven percent of the benefits.

Dr Wu said: ‘This is because people at high cardiovascular risk tend to start receiving benefits early and suffer more harm from delaying statin therapy than those at low risk.’

He called on people in their 40s with a high chance of developing heart disease and people of all ages with existing heart disease to consider taking statins immediately.

Many doctors say the potential side effects of statins are overwhelming and supporters, including health watchdog NICE, say the pills should be prescribed more widely to prevent thousands of early deaths.

However, others worry about potential long-term harm.

The drugs have been linked to diabetes and memory loss.

And the scores are uncomfortable with what they describe as middle-aged ‘overmedicalization’, which sees statins being taken ‘just in case’ patients have heart problems in later life.