Familial Hypercholesterolaemia Service
Drug treatment for cholesterol
1) If you already have heart disease or a condition called Familial Hypercholesterolaemia (which means your cholesterol is very high in your family), doctors strongly suggest taking medicine to lower your cholesterol. This helps stop more health problems in the future.
2) If you don’t have heart disease but are over 40, or have another long-term health problem that could increase your chance of heart disease, your doctor or nurse will check your cholesterol along with other things like your blood pressure and weight. They will use a special online tool called QRISK®3 to work out your chance of getting heart disease. If your risk is more than 10%, they will usually offer you medicine to lower your cholesterol.
3) You can also check your own chance of getting heart disease over your whole life using a tool called QRISK®3-lifetime. It shows you how your risk might change if you stop smoking, keep a healthy weight, control your cholesterol, and manage your blood pressure.
4) Medicines to lower cholesterol only work while you are taking them. If you stop, your cholesterol can go up again. That’s why most people need to keep taking the medicine for a long time to stay healthy.
Statins are some of the most common medicines used to lower cholesterol. People all around the world use them, and we know they are safe and work well. The two best and most used statins are called Atorvastatin and Rosuvastatin. There are other statins too, but they are not used as much now, although sometimes doctors still choose them.
Taking medicine to lower cholesterol won’t make you feel different because having high cholesterol doesn’t usually cause any symptoms. If you do feel side effects from a statin, the doctor can change how much you take, which medicine you use, or how often you take it to help you feel better. But most people don’t have any problems while taking statins.
When you start taking a statin, you will have a blood test after 3 months. After that, you usually get tested once a year. If your doctor needs to give you more medicine to lower your cholesterol, they might want to check your blood more often.
If statins alone don’t lower your cholesterol enough, there are other medicines that can help. Some of these medicines might be given as injections, but doctors only use them for certain people if statins don’t work well enough.