NICE is calling on healthcare professionals to recognise more people at risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and to offer them preventative medicines, such as statins. In draft guidance for public consultation, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommends that the threshold for starting statins be lowered from a 20 per cent risk of developing CVD over 10 years to a 10 per cent risk. 

The change is intended to reduce deaths from CVD, which is currently responsible for one in three deaths in the UK, and reflects changes in the price and availability of generic statins. Professor Mark Baker, director of the Centre for Clinical Practice at NICE, said that alongside lifestyle changes, “we recommend that statins are now offered to many more people – the effectiveness of these medicines is now well proven and their cost has fallen.”

Welcoming the consultation, Helen Williams, consultant pharmacist and Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) heart medicines expert, commented that the move “could significantly reduce cardiovascular disease, heart attacks and strokes across the population”, while “for many patients, combining a statin with a healthy lifestyle will reduce that risk even further”. She added that pharmacy professionals needed to ensure that they were “fully equipped to help patients make informed decisions about using statins”.