Despite persistent negative myths clouding their benefits, statins truly are wonder drugs. Taken once a day in pill form, they slash the swallower’s ‘bad’ LDL cholesterol by as much as 50 percent, drastically reducing their risk of serious cardiovascular ailments and death. A meta-analysis of trials with 135,000 collective participants revealed a “23% reduction in heart attacks, 17% reduction in fatal or non-fatal stroke… and a 12% reduction in all-cause mortality.”
Statins are widely recommended to adults aged 40 to 75 years at risk of cardiovascular disease. While it makes intuitive sense that even older adults would benefit as well, data on statins’ safety and effectiveness for those aged 75 and up is limited. A trio of researchers based out of Carmel Medical Center in Haifa, Israel sought to fill the gap.
Using data from the electronic medical records of Carmel Medical Center, the scientists compared the health outcomes of 8,413 individuals aged 80 and above who were continuing users of statins with those of 7,332 similar elderly patients not using statins over an average of four years per patient.
The researchers’ findings mirrored or even exceeded the benefits found in younger adults. Patients on statins enjoyed a 31 percent relative reduction in mortality compared to patients not taking statins over the study’s duration.
The researchers also compared patients who discontinued statin use before age 80 (n = 2898) with those who continued or started treatment beyond age 80. They found that continuing statin therapy was associated with a 25% reduction in coronary events, situations where blood flow to the heart muscle is severely reduced or blocked.
“The present study provides support for the argument that statin treatment improves clinical outcomes even in patients older than 80 years of age,” the authors wrote.
Individuals not using statins were 1.8 years older on average than members of the statin-using group, so that could partly explain their higher mortality rate seen in the study. They were also much healthier at the start of the study, however, with lower rates of hypertension, diabetes, and hyperlipidemia.
The present study enters a mixed landscape of prior research, with some studies on adults aged 75 or older showing benefit from statins and others none. But considering the relative paucity of data, the current work could tip the scales toward broader use of statins in octogenarians.
The study was published in March in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
Source: O.Lavon, W.Hamodi, and S.Kassem, “Statin Therapy for Primary Prevention and Clinical Outcomes in Adults Aged 80 and Older: A Retrospective Comparative Cohort Study,” Journal of the American Geriatrics Society (2026): 1–5, https://doi.org/10.1111/jgs.70375.
This article was originally published by RealClearScience and made available via RealClearWire.
