Current clinical evidence does not demonstrate that titrating lipid therapy to achieve proposed low LDL cholesterol levels is beneficial or safe.

From the Annals of Internal Medicine - (3 October 2006 Volume 145 Issue 7 Pages 520-530).

by Rodney A. Hayward, MD; Timothy P. Hofer, MD, MSc; and Sandeep Vijan, MD, MSc

"The authors found no clinical trial subgroup analyses or valid cohort or case–control analyses suggesting that the degree to which LDL cholesterol responds to a statin independently predicts the degree of cardiovascular risk reduction."


Here are the 'Key Summary Points"

• No high-quality evidence could be found that suggests that titrating lipid therapy to recommended low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol targets is superior to empirically prescribing doses of statins used in clinical trials for all patients at high cardiovascular risk.
  


• Studies addressing benefits of achieving LDL cholesterol goals have had avoidable problems, such as reliance on ecological (aggregate) analyses, ignoring statins' other proposed mechanisms of action, and not accounting for known confounders (especially healthy volunteer effects).
  


• Much more reliable evidence on currently proposed LDL cholesterol goals could be expeditiously produced by conducting cohort analyses of past statin trials that control for statin dose and pill adherence.
  


• Dichotomous comparisons (such as comparing those who reach goal vs. those who do not) can mistakenly suggest that not achieving the treatment goal results in moderate risk when in fact almost all of the risk is caused by large deviations from the ideal goal.
  


• Proposals for treatment goals should also consider the risks, patient burden, and societal costs of the treatments that may be needed to reach those goals.

Read the whole article in the Annals of Interrnal medicine at: http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/full/145/7/520