AHA Says More People Need to take Drugs to Lower Cholesterol

More Americans need to take cholesterol-lowering drugs, the American Heart Association said in a statement released Tuesday.

About 33 million Americans currently use medications that lower cholesterol levels. The new guidelines reveal that the number of people who need these medicines could reach 70 million.

"These new guidelines represent the best of what scientific research can tell us about how to prevent heart disease and stroke," said American Heart Association president Mariell Jessup, M.D., medical director of the Penn Medicine Heart and Vascular Center at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. "These recommendations will help guide the clinical decisions doctors make every day to protect their patients from two of the nation's biggest killers."

Today, doctors prescribe medications to lower cholesterol for people who are at high risk of developing heart disease or stroke. AHA recommends statin treatment for; 45-75 years with 7.5 percent risk of heart disease, young people with high levels of bad cholesterol, people with history of heart attack and diabetes (type 1 or 2). Thus, many Americans would now meet AHA's criteria for statin use.

Previously, statins were given to people who had 10 percent or higher risk of developing heart disease in the future.

"This is an enormous shift in policy as it relates to who should be treated for high levels of cholesterol," said Dr. Steven Nissen, chief of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, reports CNN.

AHA also said that obesity should be managed as a disease. Obesity can raise risk of chronic conditions such as heart diseases, diabetes, stroke, arthritis and even some cancers. According to estimates by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a third of all people living in the U.S are obese.

"Clinicians should not just think of obesity as a lifestyle issue. They should treat obesity as a disease," Frank Hu, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, according to a news release "Providing preventive care services such as obesity screening and behavioral counseling are critically important."