Abstract
BACKGROUND: Evidence on statin use for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in older people needs to be extended and updated, aiming to provide further guidance for clinical practice. METHODS: PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library and Web of Science were searched for eligible observational studies comparing statin use vs. no-statin use for primary prevention of CVD in older people (age ≥ 65 years). The primary outcomes were all-cause mortality, CVD mortality, coronary heart disease (CHD)/myocardial infraction (MI), stroke and total CV events. Risk estimates of each relevant outcome were synthesized as a hazard ratio (HR) with 95% confidence interval (95% CI) using in the random-effects model. RESULTS: Twelve eligible observational studies (n = 1,627,434) were enrolled. The pooled results suggested that statin use was associated with a significantly decreased risk of all-cause mortality (HR: 0.54, 95% CI: 0.46-0.63), CVD mortality (HR: 0.51, 95% CI: 0.39-0.65), CHD/MI (HR: 0.83, 95% CI: 0.69-1.00), stroke (HR: 0.79, 95% CI: 0.68-0.92) and total CV events (HR: 0.75, 95% CI: 0.66-0.85). The association in all-cause mortality still remained obvious at higher ages ( ≥ 70 years old, HR: 0.56, 95% CI: 0.44-0.71; ≥ 75 years old, HR: 0.70, 95% CI: 0.60-0.80; ≥ 85 years old, HR: 0.85, 95% CI: 0.74-0.97), ≥ 20% (HR: 0.47, 95% CI: 0.35-0.62) and < 20% diabetic populations (HR: 0.50, 95% CI: 0.40-0.64), and ≥ 50% (HR: 0.68, 95% CI: 0.59-0.79) and < 50% hypertensive populations (HR: 0.38, 95% CI: 0.16-0.88). CONCLUSIONS: Statin use was related to a 46%, 49%, 17%, 21% and 25% risk reduction on all-cause mortality, CVD mortality, CHD/MI, stroke and total CV events in older patients, respectively. The significant association was also addressed in older patients and ≥ 75 years old individuals for CVD primary prevention.