A US Claims-Based Analysis of Real-World Lipid-Lowering Treatment Patterns in Patients With High Cardiovascular Disease Risk or a Previous Coronary Event

The objective was to examine real-world treatment patterns of lipid-lowering therapies and their possible associated intolerance and/or ineffectiveness in patients with high cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk initiating statins and/or ezetimibe. Patients aged >= 18 years who initiated statins and/or ezetimibe from January 01, 2007, to June 30, 2011, were retrospectively identified from the IMS LifeLink PharMetrics Plus commercial claims database. Patients were further classified into 2 cohorts: (1) history of cardiovascular event (CVE) and (2) history of coronary heart disease risk equivalent (CHD RE). Patients had continuous health plan enrollment >= 1 year pre- and post-index date (statin and/or ezetimibe initiation date). Primary outcomes were index statin intensity, treatment modifications, possible associated statin/nonstatin intolerance and/or ineffectiveness issues (based on treatment modification), and time-to-treatment modifications. Analyses for each cohort were stratified by age group (<65 and >= 65 years). A total of 41,934 (history of CVE) and 170,344 patients (history of CHD RE) were included. On the index date, 8.8% to 25.1% of patients were initiated on high-intensity statin. Among patients aged <65, 79.2% and 48.8% of those with history of CVE and 78.6% and 47.3% of those with a history of CHD RE had >= 1 and 2 treatment modifications, respectively. Among all patients, 24.6% to 25.6% had possible statin intolerance and/or ineffectiveness issues after accounting for second treatment modification (if any). In conclusion, in patients with high CVD risk, index statin treatment modifications that imply possible statin intolerance and/or ineffectiveness were frequent; low use of high-intensity statins indicates unmet need in the management of hyperlipidemia and possible remaining unaccounted CVD residual risk. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).