Monitoring the long-term safety of lipid lowering therapy

Just as the treatment of hypertension and the avoidance of smoking have become recognized as meaningful approaches to the prevention of serious cardiovascular disorders, one can consider it necessary for the same reason to treat hypercholesterolaemia. Where diet alone proves insufficient or compliance is understandably poor there is a case for using lipid-lowering drugs. Various problems have arisen with earlier drugs of this type, and the newest generation of lipid-lowering drugs (the HMG-CoA) may usefully complement them. Because of the long-term use which is required, safety must be assessed over long periods, and this new class of agents may well prove to be the most extensively studied of any class of hypolipidaemic agent, many tens of thousands of patients already being involved in safety studies. Up to the present there is very little evidence that these agents will produce serious adverse reactions.