Treating to target with statins

Large-scale drugs intervention trials have proven that cholesterol-lowering therapy reduces the risk of coronary events in a wide range of at-risk patient groups. This has led to a growing consensus that plasma total and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) should be reduced to target levels that have been shown in population studies to be associated with low rates of coronary heart disease (CHD). Despite this consensus, however, a substantial proportion of patients at high coronary risk still do not receive lipid-lowering therapy. Furthermore, of those patients receiving therapy, many do not achieve the recommended targets. In order to address this problem, several treatment-to-target studies have been conducted to determine whether recommended targets are attainable with the lipid-lowering drugs that are currently available. These studies have confirmed that the statins are able to achieve recommended target levels in the majority of patients at risk. The studies have also demonstrated that most patients achieve a total cholesterol target with atorvastatin. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.