New guidelines issued for statin use to lower cholesterol

American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association issued new cholesterol guidelines that recommend that caregivers prescribe statins to healthy patients if their 10-year cardiovascular risk is 7.5 percent or higher.

Primary author Victor Montori, M.D., Mayo Clinic endocrinologist and lead researcher in the Knowledge and Evaluation Research Unit, said that the new cholesterol guidelines are a major improvement from the old ones, which lacked scientific rigor, asserting that the new guidelines are based upon calculating a patient's 10-year cardiovascular risk and prescribing proven cholesterol-lowering drugs - statins - if that risk is high.

Montori said that rather than routinely prescribing statins to the millions of adults who have at least a 7.5 percent risk of having a heart attack or stroke within 10 years, there is an opportunity for clinicians and patients to discuss the potential benefits, harm and burdens of statins in order to arrive at a choice that reflects the existing research and the values and context of each patient.

The guidelines have been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.