Women and Men Benefit Equally from Statin Therapy

Statins safely lower the incidence of major adverse vascular events (i.e., nonfatal myocardial infarctions or coronary death, any stroke, and coronary revascularization) by about 20% for every 40 mg/dL reduction in LDL cholesterol, regardless of baseline cardiovascular risk. But women have been underrepresented in many statin trials, and meta-analyses based on aggregate data have lacked the statistical power to reliably compare the effectiveness of statins in women and men.

The 2012 patient-level meta-analysis (of 27 randomized trials of statin vs. control therapies or high- vs. low-dose statins that included >170,000 participants [27% women]; median follow-up, 4.9 years) that established the effectiveness of statins regardless of cardiovasc…