Taking 1 Common Medicine Could Prevent 100,000 Heart Attacks A Year, Research Finds
It can also prevent up to 65,000 strokes per year.
It’s estimated that 47 million Americans take daily cholesterol medication, usually in the form of a statin, according to 2024 data from Yale Medicine. The lipid-lowering drug prevents plaque from accumulating in the arteries since, when left untreated, this increases your risk of heart attack and stroke. Yet, researchers say a concerning number of eligible patients aren’t on statins.
RELATED: Take Statins? New Study Says You Might Not Need To.
Researchers say not enough high-cholesterol patients are taking statins.
Despite eligibility, most patients with high cholesterol don’t take statins or similar cholesterol-lowering drugs. According to a new study led by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, closing this gap could prevent nearly 100,000 non-fatal heart attacks in the U.S. annually. Their findings were published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
The incidence of heart attack deaths has dropped over the last 50 years, but mortality cases related to heart failure, arrhythmia, and hypertensive heart disease are steadily on the rise. “Coronary artery disease remains a leading cause of death in the U.S. and globally, despite the development of statins and other cholesterol-lowering medications in recent decades,” per the press release.
Heart disease is highly prevalent in the U.S., where risk factors like obesity and hypertension affect nearly half of Americans.
As Best Life previously reported: “Earlier this year, the American Heart Association (AHA) released its annual Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics Update. Perhaps the scariest takeaway was that someone in America dies from heart disease every 34 seconds. That’s 2,500 people every day, and believe it or not, it’s more than cancer and accidental deaths combined.”
High cholesterol is by no means the only root cause of this alarming phenomenon, but lowering LDL (low-density lipoprotein) levels can certainly help prevent future life-threatening cardiovascular events.
“High cholesterol is an important chronic health condition that silently claims far too many lives—there are millions of people walking around with this condition that don’t even know they have it, and then when it is recognized, it too often goes undertreated. Evidence-based action is critical to close the gap and prevent devastating cardiovascular events,” lead study author Seth S. Martin, MD, a cardiologist and professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said in the release.
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Data shows that statins can prevent 100,000 heart attacks and 65,00 strokes per year in the U.S.
Researchers collected cardiovascular risk profiles and LDL-cholesterol levels from 4,980 adults (ages 40 to 75) from the 2013-2020 U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys.
Their nationally representative analysis found that “among those who had never had a major cardiovascular event, just under half—47 percent—were eligible for cholesterol-lowering drugs under U.S. guidelines but only 23 percent were taking them,” the news release reported.
Furthermore, only 68 percent of those who experienced a major cardiovascular event were taking cholesterol-lowering medication, even though 100 percent were eligible.
By closing this treatment gap, researchers estimate the following annual preventions in the U.S.:
- Nearly 100,000 non-fatal heart attacks
- Up to 65,000 strokes
- 10,000+ heart bypass surgeries and stent-placement procedures
Subsequently, prevention could save U.S. patients up to $30.6 billion in overall medical costs.
“These results add to a growing body of evidence that there are important shortcomings in the quality of care for common and costly chronic diseases such as high cholesterol, and that addressing those shortcomings would yield major public health benefits,” said study author G. Caleb Alexander, MD, an internist and professor in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Department of Epidemiology.
RELATED: Cardiologist Says These 2 Health Metrics Can Predict How Long You’ll Live.
The takeaway:
Taking cholesterol-lowering drugs (if eligible) can prevent thousands of heart attacks and strokes annually in the U.S.
“Bringing actual treatment closer to what guidelines recommend could be achieved through various measures, including better patient education on the benefits of treatment for those who know they have high LDL-cholesterol levels, and better screening for everyone else,” write the experts.
As always, raise any health concerns with your doctor, who can help with next steps, including potential treatment options.
