To address current gaps in expert guidance on newer nonstatin agents, the American College of Cardiology has issued an expert consensus decision pathway on the role of nonstatin therapies in LDL cholesterol lowering for risk reduction in atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD).
Since the publication of the most recent AHA/ACC cholesterol guidelines in 2018, a number of newer nonstatin medications have become available for management of lipid-associated risk, including bempedoic acid, inclisiran, evinacumab, and icosapent ethyl.
These medications were not addressed in the 2018 AHA/ACC Guideline on the Management of Blood Cholesterol.
The 53-page document – 2022 ACC Expert Consensus Decision Pathway on the Role of Nonstatin Therapies for LDL-Cholesterol Lowering in the Management of Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease Risk – was published online in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
The new expert consensus document provides guidance for clinicians until the next formal guidelines are produced, Donald Lloyd-Jones, MD, chair of the writing committee, told this news organization.
Dr. Donald M. Lloyd-Jones
The writing group focused on three key areas regarding the use of nonstatin therapies where recent scientific evidence is still under review and clinical trials are still underway:
- In what patient populations should newer nonstatin therapies be considered?
- In what situations should newer nonstatin therapies be considered?
- If newer nonstatin therapies are to be added, which therapies should be considered and in what order to maximize patient benefit and preference?
The document provides algorithms that endorse the four evidence-based patient groups identified in the 2018 guidelines and assumes that the patient is currently taking or has attempted to take a statin, given that that is the most effective initial therapy, the writing group says.
“The algorithms have been streamlined for ease of use by clinicians to help them identify who may need adjunctive nonstatin medications, to provide thresholds for consideration of those medications, and to provide a prioritization of those medications based on the strength of available evidence of efficacy,” said Dr. Lloyd-Jones, chair of the department of preventive medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago.
“We hope that these pathways will assist the decision-making process for clinicians and patients,” he added.
He also noted that statins remain the “most important first-line therapy for reducing ASCVD risk, because of their efficacy, safety, and low cost. However, for some patients, there are now options if statins do not fully achieve the goals for reducing ASCVD risk or if statins are not tolerated at effective doses.”
“The new expert consensus document highlights that higher-risk patients should be considered more often for adjunctive therapy and provides user-friendly decision pathways to assist in considering the reasonable choices available under different clinical scenarios,” Dr. Lloyd-Jones said.
The document has been endorsed by the National Lipid Association.
This research had no commercial funding. Dr. Lloyd-Jones has disclosed no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.