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Current guidelines do not recommend lipid lowering drugs for people aged over 75 years without clinical atherosclerotic disease yet, in reality, statins are widely used for primary prevention in the elderly. Real-life practice gains support from research published in The
BMJ
[1]
(2015;350:h2335), which found that use of lipid lowering drugs by healthy older people was associated with a 30% reduction in the incidence of stroke.
The French study included 7,484 adults with a mean age of 73.9 years and no known vascular disease at baseline. Over a mean follow-up of 9.1 years, stroke incidence was significantly lower in people taking statins or fibrates than in those taking neither drug (relative risk 0.66, 95% confidence interval 0.49 to 0.90).
No association was found between lipid lowering drug use and coronary heart disease.
References
[1] Alpérovitch A, Kurth T, Bertrand M et al. Primary prevention with lipid lowering drugs and long term risk of vascular events in older people: population based cohort study. The BMJ 2015;350:h2335. doi:10.1136/bmj.h2335.
