Global variation of risk thresholds for initiating statins for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease: a benefit-harm balance modelling study

BACKGROUND: We previously showed that the 10-year cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk threshold to initiate statins for primary prevention depends on the baseline CVD risk, age, sex, and the incidence of statin-related harm outcome and competing risk for non-CVD death. As these factors appear to vary across countries, we aimed in this study to determine country-specific thresholds and provide guidelines a quantitative benefit-harm assessment method for local adaptation. METHODS: For each of the 186 countries included, we replicated the benefit-harm balance analysis using an exponential model to determine the thresholds to initiate statin use for populations aged 40 to 75 years, with no history of CVD. The analyses took data inputs from a priori studies, including statin effect estimates (network meta-analysis), patient preferences (survey), and baseline incidence of harm outcomes and competing risk for non-CVD (global burden of disease study). We estimated the risk thresholds above which the benefits of statins were more likely to outweigh the harms using a stochastic approach to account for statistical uncertainty of the input parameters. RESULTS: The 5(th) and 95(th) percentiles of the 10-year risk thresholds above which the benefits of statins outweigh the harms across 186 countries ranged between 14 and 20% in men and 19–24% in women, depending on age (i.e., 90% of the country-specific thresholds were in the ranges stated). The median risk thresholds varied from 14 to 18.5% in men and 19 to 22% in women. The between-country variability of the thresholds was slightly attenuated when further adjusted for age resulting, for example, in a 5(th) and 95(th) percentiles of 14–16% for ages 40–44 years and 17–21% for ages 70–74 years in men. Some countries, especially the islands of the Western Pacific Region, had higher thresholds to achieve net benefit of statins at 25–36% 10-year CVD risks. CONCLUSIONS: This extensive benefit-harm analysis modeling shows that a single CVD risk threshold, irrespective of age, sex and country, is not appropriate to initiate statin use globally. Instead, countries need to carefully determine thresholds, considering the national or subnational contexts, to optimize benefits of statins while minimizing related harms and economic burden.