Hyperlipidemia as a Risk Factor for Cardiovascular Disease

By R. Nelson. Primary Care, 2012

1,014 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Synopsis Elevated levels of blood lipids are well documented risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Current classification schemes and treatment levels for hyperlipidemia are based on the National Cholesterol Education Panel’s (NCEP) Adult Treatment Program-3 (ATP-III) guidelines. Statins are the preferred class of drugs to lower elevated low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C). There are other classes to augment or substitute for statins, such as ezetimibe, fibrates, niacin and dietary supplements. Extensive research over the last decade has raised the question whether or not ATP-III guidelines are sufficiently aggressive. New guidelines from ATP-IV are expected to be released in the near future, but in the meantime physicians are faced with uncertainty about how low to target LDL-C, whether to pharmacologically treat high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) and triglyceride (TG) levels and how best to achieve target goals.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, Surgery

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cb39659e6ae06d15857acb80b4d8349186cac503