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Linda Carroll is a Peabody Award-winning journalist who is a contributing health and medicine writer for NBC News and TODAY. She is co-author of three books: “The Concussion Crisis: Anatomy...
Read Full Bio →. Linda Carroll is a longtime science and health journalist and is a regular contributor to NBCNews.com and Today.com. Her work has appeared in magazines, including Health and SmartMoney as well as the NYTimes's Science Times and in other newspapers around the country.
- Overview
- What is a healthy level of cholesterol?
- Statins as 'first-line therapy'
An alternative to statins may help reduce deaths from heart disease among people with high levels of LDL, or “bad” cholesterol, new research finds.
When taken as a daily pill, bempedoic acid lowered LDL cholesterol and showed a significant 39% reduction in heart disease deaths and heart attacks, researchers reported Saturday at the American Diabetes Association’s annual meeting. The findings were simultaneously published in JAMA.
“What we saw really surprised me,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Steven Nissen, chief academic officer of the Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute at the Cleveland Clinic. “I hope this will be a wake-up call for patients and physicians.”
Right now, fewer than half the people who should be prescribed a cholesterol-lowering medication because of heart disease risk are getting it, according to Nissen. That needs to change, he said.
Bempedoic acid, which was approved in 2020 by the Food and Drug Administration, is not as effective as statins, which are considered the gold standard in treating high cholesterol. However, many people stop or refuse to take statins because of possible side effects such as muscle pain, headaches, sleep problems and digestive problems.
Recent research found that about 20% of people at high risk for heart disease refuse to take statins when prescribed by their doctor. Women in particular were less likely to accept a statin prescription, according to the study published in JAMA Network Open.
Although the new study looked at only the impact of bempedoic acid on people who had adverse reactions to statins, it found that lowering cholesterol resulted in a significant decrease in heart attacks and heart-disease related deaths.
What's most important is to get blood cholesterol to healthy levels, whether by taking a statin or bempedoic acid or other lipid-lowering medication, Nissen said in an interview.
More on heart health
LDL, or low density lipoprotein, is the type of cholesterol that contributes to the buildup of fatty deposits in the arteries and raises the risk of cardiovascular events, such as heart attack and stroke. According to the American Heart Association, the optimal total cholesterol level for an adult is about 150 mg/dL, with LDL levels at or below 100 mg/dL.
While bempedoic acid may not cause as many muscle-related symptoms, it is more expensive than generic statins, Dr. Druv S. Kazi, a cardiologist, noted in an editorial accompanying the JAMA study.
"Patients are likely to face substantially higher out-of-pocket costs for bempedoic acid than for a generic statin," Kazi wrote.
Sheldon Koenig, CEO and president of Esperion, which makes the medication sold as Nexletol and funded the study, said the drug is now covered by many insurance companies.
“For Medicare, the company has preferred status and the copay is generally only $45 per month,” Koenig said.
The new findings are “exciting and very promising,” said Dr. Marc Eisenberg, a cardiologist and an associate professor of medicine at Columbia University’s Vagalos College of Physicians and Surgeons. “But statins should still be offered and tried as a first-line therapy.” Eisenberg was not associated with the new study.
While the study is “well designed,” Eisenberg said, “we still need more studies.”
- 3 min
- Linda Carroll
Jan 30, 2022 · Linda Carroll is a regular health contributor to NBC News. She is coauthor of "The Concussion Crisis: Anatomy of a Silent Epidemic" and "Out of the Clouds: The Unlikely Horseman and the...
Jan 12, 2023 · By Linda Carroll. A short stroll every half hour may help undo the health harms associated with prolonged periods of sitting, a new study finds. Mounting evidence has suggested that sitting for...
- 2 min
- Linda Carroll
Nov 6, 2023 · Linda Carroll is a regular health contributor to NBC News. She is coauthor of "The Concussion Crisis: Anatomy of a Silent Epidemic" and "Out of the Clouds: The Unlikely Horseman and the...
Sep 29, 2023 · Sept. 29, 2023, 4:35 AM PDT. By Linda Carroll. Avoiding weight gain in middle age doesn't require a complicated change in diet, a new study suggests. Researchers in the United States analyzed...
