Researchers from the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine in London have said that everyone over the age of 55 should be offered drugs to lower cholesterol and blood pressure.
A report has suggested that when assessing the risk of heart problems, offering treatment to all over-55s had the same results as testing for cholesterol or blood pressure problems. The authors have also argued that this would be simpler and more cost-effective. Current guidelines recommend that decisions to prescribe statins or blood pressure treatments for people at risk from cardiovascular disease (CVD) are based on a combination of multiple risk factors including age, sex, smoking, diabetes, serum cholesterol and blood pressure. The Wolfson Institute study compared screening people for treatment using this method with treating all people over 55. The findings suggest that both approaches perform at about the same accuracy and are similarly useful in preventing heart disease and stroke.
