Effect of lipid-lowering therapy on the mortality among patients with coronary heart diseases: A systematic review

Abstract

Introduction: Studies supported the use of lipid lowering therapy such as statin as a treatment of hypercholesterolemia for prevention of CHD. However, the use of lipid lowering therapy is not well established in clinical practice due to lack of robust evidence and contra-indications in patients with heart failure (HF). This review aimed at evaluating the evidence about preventive effect of lipid lowering therapy on the mortality caused by coronary heart diseases. Methods: A comprehensive electronic search was carried out using MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane databases to identify articles which aimed at assessing the preventive effect of lipid lowering therapy for coronary heart diseases. The data were collected from included studies using data collection sheets using specific items such as mean patient age, type of coronary disease, mean duration of the disease, drugs of lipid lowering therapy, regime of lipid lowering therapy, duration of lipid lowering therapy, reduction in mortality rate, and associated side effects. Results: Following evaluation of the eligible articles, 11 articles were included with randomized controlled trials investigating the effect of lipid-lowering therapy on the mortality of patient suffering from coronary heart diseases. The sample size in the included studies ranged from 106 to 10355 participants, and the total number of participants among all included studies were 50830 with mean age ranging from 31 to 82 years old. Conclusions: Despite the overall good outcome that is attributed to the use of statins that is not clear weather this benefit is credited to its anti- inflammatory or direct LDL lowering effect.