Data Support Treating Patient Risk, Not LDL Cholesterol Targets, Paper Argues

The emergence of new data from clinical trials and the availability of an exciting new drug class should in no way change the current approach to lipid management, according to IHPI members Tim Hofer, Rodney Hayward, and Jeremy Sussman.

“We felt it was important to point that these 2 things are not necessary connected,” said Hofer. “The fact that the lipid trials gave some evidence for the LDL hypothesis—that LDL is the causal pathway through which these medications work, which is still uncertain, but was even more uncertain before these trials—doesn’t at all change the reasoning for why you would move to a risk-based approach. It seems like that was being conflated.”