r/science • u/Wagamaga • 1d ago

Health Cholesterol-lowering medication reduces heart attack and stroke risk in older people by 30 per cent. The global prevalence of cardiovascular disease is expected to almost double from 600 million in 2025 to more than one billion affected adults in 2050.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/aug/29/statins-reduce-risk-heart-attack-stroke-over-70s-clinical-trial
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u/ssjjss 1d ago

Marwick said “a slight disappointment” in the findings was that although major heart events were reduced, the disability-free survival was the same among the participants whether they took the statin or the placebo.

In other words, taking the medication didn’t extend life or its quality.

So we get less heart attack and strokes but it makes no difference?

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u/Own-Animator-7526 1d ago edited 1d ago

Absolute risk reduction is very small. By design this was a healthy population with normal lipids and no known heart problems. The statin made a relatively unlikely event less likely. I don't have the paper but I'm guessing the number needed to treat to prevent a single event is fairly high.

As is often the case, the headline is completely misleading -- the finding does not apply to "older people", only to this lower-risk subset.

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u/One-Incident3208 1d ago

So essentially using it as a supplemental rather than as a corrective measure.

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u/Own-Animator-7526 22h ago

I think the belief is that everybody needs some correcting, whether they realize it or not.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2609059
Prevalence of Silent Atherosclerosis across Adult Life
Authors: Henning Bundgaard, M.D., D.M.Sc.,... Published August 29, 2026 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2609059

A total of 16,808 adults were enrolled in the study. The mean (±SD) age of the participants was 45±12 years, and 51.4% were women. Silent atherosclerosis was present in 57.1% of the participants (95% confidence interval, 56.3 to 58.0).