The past, present, and future of statin therapy

Statins are a remarkably safe and efficacious class of medications that have proved to be invaluable in the fight against heart disease. Statins have been prescribed to millions of patients for nearly 20 years; thus there have been hundreds of millions of patient-years of use, with relatively few adverse effects and incalculable benefits. Results from large-scale clinical trials have shown that statins are associated with dramatic decreases in cardiovascular risk. It seems certain that statins will remain a valuable and essential part of the lipid-lowering landscape, but combinations of statins with other lipid-lowering agents are increasingly important. Even with the most potent statins, the desired low-density lipoprotein cholesterol goal might not be attained with statin monotherapy. Furthermore, because of the increasing prevalence of diabetes and the metabolic syndrome, along with their attendant multiple lipid abnormalities, combinations of statins with medications targeted toward multiple lipoprotein particles will emerge.