Women do benefit from lipid lowering: latest clinical trial data

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality among women in industrialized nations. Optimizing cardiovascular risk reduction is therefore of paramount importance, particularly among postmenopausal women, in whom the incidence of cardiovascular disease is highest. Accumulated data from a series of landmark trials unequivocally demonstrate the efficacy of statin therapy in the primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular outcomes in both men and women. Moreover, the recently released Heart Protection Study provides substantive evidence that lowering low-density lipoprotein cholesterol below levels currently defined as optimal by National Cholesterol Educational Program guidelines is strongly associated with further cardiovascular risk reduction, and that this benefit accrues in all subgroups of patients, including women and the elderly. Despite the ability of hormone replacement therapy to improve serum lipid profiles, randomized trials of hormone therapy have demonstrated no benefit in reducing coronary outcomes among postmenopausal women. In contrast, data from over 8,000 women enrolled in the statin trials demonstrate that lipid lowering with statins is as effective at reducing cardiovascular outcomes in women as it is in men and suggest that statins should be considered standard of care for the prevention of adverse cardiovascular events in women at risk for coronary heart disease.