Photo Credit: Sittithat Tangwitthayaphum

For patients aged 75 years and older, statin therapy is associated with a risk reduction in cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), according to a study published online May 28 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Wanchun Xu, M.Phil., from the University of Hong Kong, and colleagues examined the benefits and risks of using statins for primary prevention in old (aged 75 to 84 years) and very old (aged 85 years and older) adults in a sequential target trial emulation comparing matched cohorts initiating and not initiating statin therapy.

The researchers found that 9,676 of the 42,680 matched person-trials aged 75 to 84 years and 1,600 of the 5,390 matched person-trials aged 85 years and older developed CVDs during an average follow-up of 5.3 years. For overall CVD incidence, there was a risk reduction observed for initiating statin therapy for adults aged 75 to 84 years (five-year standardized risk reduction, 1.20 percent in the intention-to-treat analysis [ITT] and 5.00 percent in the per-protocol [PP] analysis) and among those aged 85 years or older (4.44 and 12.50 percent in ITT and PP analyses, respectively). The risks for myopathies and liver dysfunction were not significantly increased in either age group.

“Considering the increasing burden related to CVD in the aging population, our study results support the prescription of statin therapy for primary prevention of CVD in old and very old adults,” the authors write.

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