A major shift in US cholesterol guidelines could make an estimated 21.5 million additional adults eligible for statin therapy, expanding the focus of cardiovascular prevention from near-term risk to the possibility of heart attacks and strokes decades into the future.
The updated recommendations, released by the American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology and other medical organizations, now assess cardiovascular risk over a 30-year period instead of focusing primarily on the next 10 years. The age range used to assess eligibility also expanded from 40-75 to 30-79.
