{"id":1731,"date":"2013-11-14T16:12:14","date_gmt":"2013-11-14T19:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nchspressroom.wordpress.com\/?p=1731"},"modified":"2013-11-14T16:12:14","modified_gmt":"2013-11-14T19:12:14","slug":"statistics-on-statin-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/2013\/11\/14\/1731\/","title":{"rendered":"Statistics on Statin Use"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"line-height:1.5\">High cholesterol is a risk factor for heart disease, which is the leading cause of death for both men and women.\u00a0\u00a0Nearly 600,000 people die of\u00a0<a title=\"Heart Disease Facts\" href=\"http:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/heartdisease\/facts.htm\">heart disease<\/a>\u00a0in the United States every year\u2013that\u2019s 1 in every 4 deaths. \u00a0Every year about 715,000 Americans have a heart attack and the costs of coronary heart disease alone costs the U.S. over $100 billion annually. \u00a0This\u00a0total includes the cost of health care services, medications, and lost productivity.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Although cholesterol levels may be\u00a0reduced by dietary modifications and increased\u00a0physical activity, these lifestyle changes are often\u00a0difficult to maintain or not sufficiently effective. \u00a0In those cases, or for persons with other risk factors\u00a0for heart disease, the use of cholesterol-lowering\u00a0medications is often suggested.<\/p>\n<p>Widespread belief in the value of drug therapy to lower\u00a0cholesterol\u2014and consequently to reduce mortality\u00a0from heart disease\u2014began with the introduction of\u00a0<a title=\"Statin drug use in the past 30 days among adults 45 years of age and over,by sex and age: United States,1988\u20131994,1999\u20132002, and 2005\u20132008\" href=\"http:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/nchs\/data\/hus\/2010\/fig17.pdf\">statin <\/a>drugs in 1987 and published studies that proved\u00a0their effectiveness. There are several classes of\u00a0cholesterol-lowering drugs, but statins have\u00a0become the drug class of choice because of their\u00a0demonstrated efficacy and safety.<\/p>\n<p>From 1988\u20131994 to 2005\u20132008, the use of statin drugs\u00a0by adults 45 years of age and over increased 10-fold,\u00a0from 2% to 25%. There was a concurrent decline in the\u00a0percentage of Americans with high serum total\u00a0cholesterol (greater than or equal to 240 mg\/dL) over\u00a0this time period, which may be attributable to increased\u00a0use of cholesterol-lowering medications, especially\u00a0statins.<\/p>\n<p>Both men and women are increasingly taking statin\u00a0drugs. However, in 2005\u20132008 one-half of men 65\u201374\u00a0years of age took a statin drug in the past 30 days,\u00a0compared with just over one-third of women in that\u00a0age group.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/nchspressroom.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/11\/fig17.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1738 alignleft\" alt=\"fig17\" src=\"http:\/\/nchspressroom.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/11\/fig17-e1384362359228.jpg?w=450\" width=\"450\" height=\"409\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>High cholesterol is a risk factor for heart disease, which is the leading cause of death for both men and women.\u00a0\u00a0Nearly 600,000 people die of\u00a0heart disease\u00a0in the United States every year\u2013that\u2019s 1 in every 4 deaths. \u00a0Every year about 715,000 Americans have a heart attack and the costs of coronary heart disease alone costs the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":195,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[63936,64312],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1731"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/195"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1731\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}