Application of New Cholesterol Guidelines to a Population-Based Sample

The 2013 guidelines of the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association (ACC-AHA) for the treatment of cholesterol expand the indications for statin therapy for the prevention of cardiovascular disease.

Using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys of 2005 to 2010, we estimated the number, and summarized the risk-factor profile, of persons for whom statin therapy would be recommended (i.e., eligible persons) under the new ACC-AHA guidelines, as compared with the guidelines of the Third Adult Treatment Panel (ATP III) of the National Cholesterol Education Program, and extrapolated the results to a population of 115.4 million U.S. adults between the ages of 40 and 75 years.