Study blows the doors off "statin fortress"

A recent study from Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice has just blown the doors off the "statin fortress".

According to the study, many clinical guidelines for cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention contain risk estimation charts/calculators. These have shown a tendency to overestimate risk, which indicates that there might be theoretical flaws in the algorithms. Total cholesterol is a frequently used variable in the risk estimates. Some studies indicate that the predictive properties of cholesterol might not be as straightforward as widely assumed. The researchers aim was to document the strength and validity of total cholesterol as a risk factor for mortality in a well-defined, general Norwegian population without known CVD at baseline.

They assessed the association of total serum cholesterol with total mortality, as well as mortality from CVD and ischaemic heart disease (IHD). The study population comprised 52,087 Norwegians, aged 20–74, who were followed-up on cause-specific mortality for 10 years (510 297 person-years in total).

Among women, higher cholesterol meant lower all-cause mortality as well as CVD mortality. Among men, the association of cholesterol with mortality from CVD and in total followed a ‘U-shaped’ pattern.

The study provides an updated epidemiological indication of possible errors in the CVD risk algorithms of many clinical guidelines. If the findings are generalizable, clinical and public health recommendations regarding the ‘dangers’ of cholesterol should be revised. This is especially true for women, for whom moderately elevated cholesterol
(by current standards) may prove to be not only harmless but even beneficial.

The entire study can be found here.