A study partly funded by NHLBI found that more than half of the patients who could be receiving statin therapy but are not, were never offered the option. When prescribed statins, the patients also report that fear of side effects, real and perceived, is the most common reason for declining or discontinuing the therapy.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, indicates that, overall, there is high willingness to take statins among both groups of patients, the ones who have preciously declined them, and the ones who were never offered them.
According to the researchers, there is a significant opportunity to increase the use of statin if doctors are better at identifying eligible patients. By the same token, there is opportunity and great need of patient education about the safety of statin therapy.