Statin therapy is similarly effective for men and women with an equivalent risk of cardiovascular disease for the prevention of major vascular events, according to a meta-analysis that was published online ahead of print January 8 in The Lancet.
Researchers analyzed data from the Cholesterol Treatment Trialists’ Collaboration, which included results from 22 trials that compared statin therapy with a control treatment and 5 trials that compared more-intensive versus less-intensive statin therapy. Women accounted for 46,675 (27%) of 174,149 randomly assigned participants.
The use of a statin had similar absolute effects on 1-year lipid concentrations in both men and women, with reductions in low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol of approximately 1.1 mmol/L in the trials studying statin therapy and control treatment and approximately 0.5 mmol/L in those trials comparing more-intensive therapy with less-intensive therapy.
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The researchers found that proportional reductions per 1.0-mmol/L reduction in LDL cholesterol in major vascular events were similar for women and men overall and for women and men with a predicted 5-year absolute cardiovascular risk of less than 10%.
