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February 5, 2014

More Than a Billion People Taking Statins?Potential Implications of the New Cardiovascular Guidelines

Author Affiliations
  • 1Departments of Medicine and Health Research and Policy, Stanford University School of Medicine
  • 2Department of Statistics, Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences, Stanford, California
JAMA. 2014;311(5):463-464. doi:10.1001/jama.2013.284657

The American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association (ACC/AHA) guidelines on assessment of cardiovascular risk1 and on treatment of blood cholesterol, which included recommendations for primary prevention with statins,2 came under intense criticism immediately with their release. Main concerns focused on flawed methods (problems with the risk calculation),3 ethics (conflicts of interest),4 and inferences (too many people offered treatment).

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