Older adults, regardless of whether they have cardiovascular disease, have better outcomes if they take a statin. However, medication lowered the risk less in people without previous cardiovascular disease, according to a study published Tuesday in Heart.
The findings suggest that the drugs should be considered for most people over the age of 70, the researchers said.
Investigators modeled the lifetime effects and cost-effectiveness of statin therapy for people aged 70 and over. The team projected cardiovascular risks, survival, quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) or years living in good health, along with costs of statin use. The team used data from 5,103 people with previous cardiovascular disease and from 15,019 people without it.
The lifetime use of a standard statin, which reduced bad cholesterol by 35% to 45%, increased QALYs by 0.24 to 0.70 and 0.37 to 1.05 life years. Those on higher intensity treatment, which lowered cholesterol by 45% or more, increased QALYs by a further 0.04 to 0.13, or 0.08 to 0.21 life years.
The study, conducted in Oxford, England, found that statin use was cost-effective with an incremental cost per QALY gained below £3,502 (about $4,578) for standard therapy and below £11,778 (about $15,400) for higher intensity therapy, which is under the current threshold for good value interventions, the team wrote.
“This study reports that statin therapy is highly likely to be cost-effective in older people, although there was greater uncertainty among older people without [cardiovascular disease] in scenario analysis, with substantially smaller risk reductions with statin therapy,” the authors wrote.
“While further randomized evidence will be helpful, the robustness of these findings indicates that [most] older people are likely to benefit cost-effectively from statin therapy and should be considered for treatment,” the team added.
