Patients aged 75 and older with no atherosclerotic CVD history who stop taking statins for primary prevention are not more likely to have a related CVD event, a study in The Lancet Healthy Longevity suggests.

However, a top Australian cardiologist is cautious about the findings, pointing to the size and follow-up length of the French randomised controlled trial.

It divided 1160 patients (median age 80) who had taken any statin for at least a year into discontinuation and control groups in a 4:5 ratio. About 67% were female, 77% had a history of hypertension and 29.5% had diabetes.

Over three years, 7.2% of discontinued patients died compared with 7.9% in the continuation group, with no significant difference in atherosclerotic CVD (ASCVD) events.