PARIS – The 2019 dyslipidemia management guidelines from the European Society of Cardiology set an LDL cholesterol target for very-high-risk people of less than 55 mg/dL (as well as at least a 50% cut from baseline), a class I recommendation. This marks the first time a cardiology society has either recommended a target goal for this measure below 70 mg/dL or endorsed treating patients to still-lower cholesterol once their level was already under 70 mg/dL.*
The guidelines went further by suggesting consideration of an even lower treatment target for LDL-cholesterol in very-high-risk, secondary prevention patients who have already had at least two atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease events during the past 2 years, a setting that could justify an LDL-cholesterol goal of less than 40 mg/dL (along with a cut from baseline of at least 50%), a class IIb recommendation that denotes a “may be considered,” endorsement.
“In all the trials, lower was better. There was no lower level of LDL cholesterol that’s been studied that was not better” for patient outcomes, Colin Baigent, BMBCH, said while presenting the new guideline at the annual congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). “It’s very clear” that the full treatment benefit from lowering LDL-cholesterol extends to getting very-high risk patients below these levels, said Dr. Baigent, professor of cardiology at Oxford (England) University and one of three chairs of the ESC’s dyslipidemia guideline-writing panel.
While this change was seen as a notably aggressive goal and too fixed on a specific number by at least one author of the 2018 American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology cholesterol management guideline (J Am Coll Cardiol. 2019 Jun;73[24]:e285-e350), it was embraced by another U.S. expert not involved in writing the most recent U.S. recommendations.
Dr. Robert H. Eckel
“A goal for LDL-cholesterol of less than 55 mg/dL is reasonable; it’s well documented” by trial evidence “and I support it,” said Robert H. Eckel, MD, an endocrinologist and professor of medicine at the University of Colorado in Aurora. Dr. Eckel added that he “also supports” an LDL-cholesterol of less than 40 mg/dL in very-high-risk patients with a history of multiple events or with multiple residual risk factors, and he said he has applied this lower LDL-cholesterol goal in his practice for selected patients. But Dr. Eckel acknowledged in an interview that the evidence for it was less clear-cut than was the evidence behind a goal of less than 55 mg/dL. He also supported the concept of including a treatment goal in U.S. lipid recommendations, which in recent versions has been missing. “I fall back on a cholesterol goal for practical purposes” of making the success of cholesterol-lowering treatment easier to track.
The new ESC goal was characterized as “arbitrary” by Neil J. Stone, MD, vice-chair of the panel that wrote the 2018 AHA/ACC guideline, which relied on treating secondary-prevention patients at high risk to an LDL-cholesterol at least 50% less than before treatment, and recommended continued intensification for patients whose LDL-cholesterol level remained at or above 70 mg/dL.
Dr. Neil J. Stone
“If the patient is at 58 mg/dL I’m not sure anyone can tell me what the difference is,” compared with reaching less than 55 mg/dL, Dr. Stone said in an interview. “I worry about focusing on a number and not on the concept that people at the very highest risk deserve the most intensive treatment; the Europeans agree, but they have a different way of looking at it. Despite this difference in approach, the new ESC guidelines and the 2018 U.S. guideline “are more similar than different,” stressed Dr. Stone, professor of medicine and preventive medicine at Northwestern University, Chicago.