The burden of statin therapy in urban population of Iran based on new ACC/AHA guideline

In Nov 2013, the instruction for controlling high cholesterol has been released by the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association (AHA) which need to be assessed in the different communities. Of total 6275 individual aged 40-75 years who entered at the Tehran Lipids and Glucose Study from March 1999 to 20 March 2010 in first examination cycle, 5153 with the median follow-up of more than ten years were eligible to enter in this study. The 10-year risk of hard cardiovascular disease (Hard CVD) for Statin therapy based on ACC/AHA clinical guideline was calculated and this risk was calculated for each subgroup of the guideline who recommended for statin therapy comparing to the risk in individuals with prevalent CVD. Of nearly 6.5 million urban population of Iran (according to the 1996 census) about 4 million individuals (2.55 million men and 1.4 million women) were eligible for statin therapy. With respect to the urban population growth from the 1996 to the 2011 census (about 2.5 percent increases) the number of individuals for receiving statin increased by 50% (5 million men and 3 million women). Also, the risk in non-diabetic men with calculated risk of 5-7.5% and diabetic women with calculated risk of <5% for hard CVD was lower than 0.2. By removing these people from total eligible population, the burden of statin therapy will reduced about 8% which is about 540.752 persons, according to the Census 1996 and 1.155.079 individuals based on the census 2011. The new guideline of ACC/AHA for statin therapy is relatively reasonable except for some subgroups. To reduce the burden of medical expenses, statin prescription can be ignored by physicians in these subgroups. Of course further research is required to calculate the net benefit for estimating the clinical usefulness of statin therapy in recommended guideline subgroups.