New Male Users of Lipid-Lowering Drugs for Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease: The Impact of Treatment Persistence on Morbimortality. A Longitudinal Study

The objective of this study was to analyse persistence to lipid-lowering drug use for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in a new users cohort, to explore all-cause and cardiovascular related morbidity, comorbidity and mortality in this group and, finally, to study the relationship between persistence and morbimortality. We selected subjects who started lipid-lowering treatment for primary prevention of CVD between 1 January 2010 and 31 December 2017 (N = 1424), and classified them as treatment-persistent or -nonpersistent. Bivariate analyses were performed to compare sociodemographic and clinical variables, morbimortality and time to event between groups. The association between morbidities was explored using comorbidity network analysis. The effect of persistence was analysed using logistic regression and Cox survival analyses. Only 38.7% of users were persistent with treatment. Persistent and nonpersistent users had similar sociodemographic and clinical profiles, although differed in age, smoking status, and glycemia. Comorbidity networks revealed that the number of co-occurring diagnoses was higher in nonpersistent than persistent users. Adjusted analyses indicated a protective effect of treatment persistence, especially against major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE), but this effect was not statistically significant. Observational studies are crucial to characterize real-world effectiveness.