Statins to be prescribed to 100,000 extra patients

STATINS will be prescribed to 100,000 more people under plans by Public Health England (PHE) to prevent thousands of heart attacks and strokes each year.

Health officials want to screen millions more middle-aged people to pick up early signs of cardiovascular disease.

Currently, fewer than half of 40- to 75-year-olds have been assessed for warning signs, such as high cholesterol and high blood pressure, but PHE wants to check at least 75 per cent and increase the number taking statins from 35 per cent to 45 per cent.

Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, said: “Almost half of those with high blood pressure are going about their daily lives without it being detected or treated.

“Millions of people are needlessly at risk of heart attacks or strokes when it could be prevented. So I want to help more people take the time out to protect their future health and get checked.”

Around seven million people in Britain suffer from cardiovascular disease and the condition causes one quarter of all deaths each year.

The initiative comes as a study by Stanford University in the US revealed heart disease patients who fail to take their statins correctly are three times more likely to die within a year.

Despite millions of Britons being prescribed statins, ongoing fears about their side-effects have led to many people failing to take the drugs.

Now, the American study, which looked at nearly 350,000 people with cardiovascular disease, has found that not sticking to medication could be deadly.

Research found those who took pills sporadically were three times more likely to die within the eight-month follow-up period.

Where 92 per cent of those who took pills regularly could expect to be alive at the end of the study, just 70 per cent of those who failed to take the drugs correctly were still living.

Commenting on the findings, Dr Amitava Banerjee, associate professor in clinical data science at UCL, said: “In summary, drugs do not work if you do not take them. The higher the adherence to statins, the lower the mortality.

“If statins are recommended and prescribed by your doctor, then we need to focus much more on adherence.”

Experts said the findings showed why cardiovascular disease was still a big killer despite the advent of statins.

Prof David Webb, the former president of the British Pharmacological Society, added: “Although better approaches to adherence are being developed such as smartphone reminders and psychological support, poor adherence to medicines remains an important reason for poor outcomes in many chronic conditions.”

The research was published in the journal JAMA Cardiology.