Birmingham joins new £5m UK Hardware Security Institute

A study by the University of Birmingham has found that statins are not always prescribed to patients who will benefit the most from them. This research by the team from the Institute of Applied Health Research examined the clinical records of 1.4 million patients who did not have existing cardiovascular disease and who were not taking, or had not been offered, statins in the past. These patients were suitable for a cardiovascular diseases (CVD) risk assessment to guide clinicians in deciding who should be offered a statin for the primary prevention of CVD. The risk assessment results in a QRISK2 score - a prediction algorithm for CVD that uses traditional risk factors (age, systolic blood pressure, smoking status and ratio of total serum cholesterol to high-density lipoprotein cholesterol) together with body mass index, ethnicity, measures of deprivation, family history, chronic kidney disease, rheumatoid arthritis, atrial fibrillation, diabetes mellitus, and antihypertensive treatment. The study found that the majority of patients (over 90%) who had a QRISK2 score coded between 2012 and 2015 did not go on to have a statin prescribed. This was in part due to the fact that around 60% of these patients fell into the 'low risk' category and therefore, according to NICE guidelines, should not be prescribed statins. However, despite the NICE guidelines, there was still a small but significant proportion of this group being prescribed statins.