Millions of kidney patients should be put on statins, say health chiefs

MORE than two million extra people should be offered statins to help prevent deaths from heart disease, health chiefs have ordered.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) has said patients suffering from chronic kidney disease (CKD) face a higher risk of potentially fatal heart problems and should be given access to the cholesterol-lowering drugs.

Around eight million Britons take the daily pill to reduce the chances of heart attacks and strokes, despite years of medical controversy regarding the efficacy and side-effects of the drugs.

But yesterday clinical leaders repeated their backing for the benefits and safety of statins, instructing NHS doctors to make them available for kidney patients aged 18 or over, of whom there are up to 2.6 million in England.

About 60,000 people die from CKD each year, which can be caused by a raft of conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, kidney infections, as well as high cholesterol.

They tend to be older patients for whom treatments to control the condition include lifestyle changes and blood pressure drugs, or in more severe cases dialysis or a kidney transplant.

Professor Gillian Leng, the deputy chief executive at Nice, said: “We know that a high number of people with long-term kidney problems will develop cardiovascular disease. This means they have an increased risk of suffering a fatal heart attack or stroke.”

She added: “The effectiveness of statins is now well proven, as is their long-term safety. They may appeal to a lot of people who are at risk.”

GPS, nephrologists, cardiologists and other health workers will now be required to check whether kidney patients are already taking statins and, where they are not, discuss moving them on to the drugs.

Patients should at first be offered 20mg pills, then higher doses if these prove ineffective. NHS guidance recommends that around 40 per cent of all adults take statins to protect against heart disease, which is the biggest cause of early death for men and second only behind dementia for women.

NHS watchdogs recommended lowering the thresholds for statins in 2014, meaning the majority of men over 60 and women over 65 should be offered them.

This was on the back of research suggesting scaremongering about the drugs’ side-effects had led to a fall in the number of people taking statins, risking more than 2,000 premature deaths.

Last month a study in the European Heart Journal reported successful animal trials of a new medication that promises to replace the daily pill with a yearly injection.

The research found the vaccine was able to cut cholesterol by over half, while dramatically reducing fatty deposits in the arteries, as well as damage caused by hardening and narrowing of the arteries.

CKD can be diagnosed using blood and urine tests, although shortness of breath, blood in the urine or swollen ankles, feet or hands can be tell-tale signs of the condition.

Last year patients were warned that it can be triggered by an irregular heartbeat, after an Oxford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology joint analysis of nine million participants showing that atrial fibrillation increased the risk by 64 per cent.

Previously it was thought that an irregular heartbeat only significantly raised the risk of suffering a stroke.

60,000 The number of chronic kidney disease sufferers in Britain who die from the incurable disease each year