Lipid-lowering Therapy and Goal Achievement in High-risk Patients From French General Practice

The goal of this study was to summarize patterns of lipid-lowering therapy (LLT) usage and achievement of guideline-identified lipid goals in a 2015 general practice cohort of French patients with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) and/or diabetes mellitus (DM).

From the IMS Health Real-World Data database, patients aged ≥18years were classified hierarchically into mutually exclusive categories of ASCVD subgroups and DM. LLT use and lipid goal achievement were assessed on the date of lipid measurement. The data were compared with previously published results of LLT use and lipid goal achievement in a 2014 UK population.

Of 32,924 patients meeting the inclusion criteria, only 47.5% were prescribed a statin as of the index date. Hierarchically, the highest rates of use of any statin (73.3%) and high-intensity statins (43.3%) were among patients with recent acute coronary syndrome; rates in DM without ASCVD were 38.7% and 2.3%, respectively. Overall, achievement of LDL-C levels <1.8 mmol/L (<70 mg/dL) was only 13.9% for patients with ASCVD and 10.7% with DM. Relative to a 2014 UK population, the 2015 French cohort (data reanalyzed according to the UK statin categorization) were prescribed "high-dose statins" less frequently (31.4% vs 20.9%, and 18.7% vs 7.2%, for ASCVD and DM). Similarly, the proportion of patients with high-dose statins achieving LDL-C levels <1.8mmol/L was higher in the 2014 UK population than in the 2015 French population (37.3% vs 22.2%, and 36.8% vs 20.3%, for ASCVD and DM).

In a large cohort of French patients with ASCVD and/or DM, LLT usage and LDL-C goal achievement were suboptimal, relative to current guidelines.