A research analysis published this week in JAMA Internal Medicine concluded that many people taking statins, a cholesterol-lowering drugs, may not need to be.
When prescribing the drugs, doctors use Pooled Cohort Equations (PCE), which take into account a number of predictors of heart disease, to help determine if a patient needs them. However, when using a new, more accurate equation called Predicting Risk of Cardiovascular Disease Events (PREVENT), millions of people currently taking statins no longer meet the criteria to need them, while others who haven’t been prescribed the drugs could now be eligible.
PCE calculations are based on data that’s decades old and lack diversity, while the PREVENT equations—released in 2023 by the the American Heart Association—uses newer data and a more diverse sample of people. It takes new factors into account, such as kidney and metabolic function, while no longer including race.
When comparing the two types of equations applied to the entire group of 3,785 study participants, PCE estimated around 8% would develop atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease over the next decade. Using PREVENT, the estimate was just 4%.
