Improving the use of statins for cardiovascular disease prevention using polygenic risk scores

Nearly half of adults in the U.S. have some kind of cardiovascular disease, including heart attacks and strokes. Statins are medications that lower cholesterol and are proven to be effective in reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease. Over 70 million patients nationwide are recommended to take this medication. There is some evidence that a person’s genetic background could help doctors improve statin prescribing, but this has not been fully studied.

The main goal of this project is to find out if genetic factors can predict how well specific statins work at reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease for people with different genetic backgrounds. The study team will compare cardiovascular health and disease in hundreds of thousands of statin users and nonusers using KP Research Bank health records and genetic data. The results of the study may help further reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease by taking a person’s genetic background into account when prescribing statin medications.