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By Dennis Thompson<\/b>
HealthDay Reporter<\/i><\/p>\n
TUESDAY, July 7, 2020 (HealthDay News)<\/p>\n
Older adults with healthy hearts probably would benefit from taking a cholesterol<\/a>-lowering statin, a new study contends.<\/p>\n People 75 and older who were free of heart disease<\/a> and prescribed a statin wound<\/a> up with a 25% lower risk of death from any cause and a 20% lower risk of heart<\/a>-related death, researchers reported July 7 in the Journal of the American Medical Association<\/i>.<\/p>\n “Based on these data, age is not a reason to not prescribe statins<\/a>,” said lead researcher Dr. Ariela Orkaby, a physician-scientist at the VA Boston Healthcare System and associate epidemiologist with Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.<\/p>\n Statins<\/a> are drugs<\/a> used to prevent buildup of plaques that can narrow or block arteries, leading to heart attack<\/a> and stroke<\/a>.<\/p>\n Until recently, guidelines recommended halting statin therapy at age 75, said Dr. Mary Ann McLaughlin, medical director of the Cardiac Health Program at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.<\/p>\n “In 2018, the guidelines changed to say statins are a reasonable choice for those older than 75 without a life-limiting disease” like cancer<\/a> or organ failure, she said.<\/p>\n This new study provides evidence that changing the guidelines to allow statin therapy to continue was the right move, said McLaughlin, who wasn’t part of the research.<\/p>\n “This age group is one of the fastest-growing groups,” she said. “The over-75 cohort is living even longer, and the first evidence of atherosclerotic<\/a> disease or cardiovascular disease<\/a> can be sudden death. There are many patients who are living very active and full lives into their late 80s and 90s these days.”<\/p>\n For this study, Orkaby’s team analyzed data from more than 300,000 veterans 75 or older who used VA health care services between 2002 and 2012. None had experienced a heart attack<\/a>, stroke<\/a> or other heart<\/a> problem.<\/p>\n Of those vets, more than 57,000 started taking statins during that period. Researchers compared those who used statins against those who did not, and found that their risk of heart-related death was significantly lower.<\/p>\n The benefits remained for veterans at advanced ages, including those 90 or older, and also were strong among vets with dementia<\/a>, results showed.<\/p>\n Patients on statins also had a lower risk of heart attacks<\/a> and strokes<\/a>, researchers said.<\/p>\n Because the study relied on VA data, the patients involved were overwhelmingly male (97%) and white (91%), McLaughlin noted.<\/p>\n But randomized clinical trials<\/a> now underway will provide additional evidence about statin use in a broader mix of older people, Orkaby and McLaughlin said.<\/p>\n There’s been an age bias in statin clinical trials<\/a>, because older folks tend to have more medical problems and including them can confuse the results, Orkaby said.<\/p>\n “Older adults usually have more than one thing going on,” she said. “It’s much easier to study people in their 50s who may just have high blood pressure<\/a> or just have diabetes<\/a>. When you’re running<\/a> a big trial, you may not want to include people who are going to get hospitalized for some other issue — for example, because they fell.”<\/p>\n As a result, “almost all the data that exists right now for statins is in younger people, even though it’s really older adults who have the highest risk of having a heart attack or a stroke<\/a>,” Orkaby said.<\/p>\n These new results indicate it’s time to stop discriminating based on age alone and saying there is no data to support statin use in older folks, she said.<\/p>\n “We have some reasonably good data to suggest that statins could save lives,” Orkaby said. “If you got to 75 and you weren’t yet put on a statin, you may actually be a healthier older adult who’s likely to live another 10 or 15 years. Those people may be the ones who would benefit the most from that, long-term.”<\/p>\n![\"MedicalNews\"](\"https:\/\/images.medicinenet.com\/images\/HealthDay\/healthday.png\")
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