Statins for the Healthy Eventually Means Almost Everybody

Two new studies:

One of the studies, led by Gregg Fonarow of UCLA, examined 131,000 hospital admissions for heart disease and found that at least half of the patients had normal LDL levels. The other study [gated, but with abstract], called JUPITER, involved 18,000 people. It showed that giving a cholesterol-lowering statin to older people with normal LDL cut their risk of heart attack and stroke in half.

The implications:

JUPITER suggests that millions more older people – as many as 11 million, Yale researcher Erica Spatz reported this month – should be getting statins. That would bring the total to about 45 million people, or 80% of all men older than 50 and all women older than 60. [link]

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