September 7, 2021

Could statins go OTC?

Five times efforts were made to make statins available over the counter. Five times it failed, in part because studies showed too many people who asked for them shouldn’t take them.

But researchers at Duke and the University of Texas developed an application that, when tested with people who had the equivalent of a seventh- or eighth-grade education, was more than 96 percent accurate in deciding who should get the statins and who shouldn’t. That’s higher than most prescribers, and it could open the door for non-prescription statins “right next to the aspirin.”

“We got 96%, we were very pleased and we’re going to now go on and do another study of about 1,000 patients to verify that we’re getting the right people on statin therapy. If that works, this goes to the FDA for approval.”