Lipid-lowering therapy and LDL-C control for primary prevention in persons with diabetes across 90 health systems in the United States.

OBJECTIVE

National guidelines recommend statin therapy for patients with type 2 diabetes. We assessed the extent of moderate- to high-intensity statin therapy utilization in community practice.

METHODS

We evaluated lipid-lowering therapy (LLT) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels at baseline and 1-year follow-up in patients aged 40-75 years with type 2 diabetes but without atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD), across 90 health systems in the United States participating in an electronic health record-derived dataset, Cerner Real-World Data. Multivariable logistic regression was used to evaluate factors associated with utilization of moderate- to high-intensity statin.

RESULTS

We identified 241,232 patients with type 2 diabetes (58.1 % on moderate- to high-intensity statin, 7.0 % on low-intensity statin, and 34.9 % on no statin). Predictors of moderate- to high-intensity statin therapy included retinopathy (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 1.26; 95 % confidence interval [CI], 1.15-1.38), hypertension (aOR, 1.52; 95 % CI, 1.43-1.61), and stage 3 chronic kidney disease (aOR, 1.14; 95 % CI, 1.07-1.21). Women (aOR, 0.85; 95 % CI, 0.82-0.87), and those with rheumatoid arthritis (aOR, 0.79; 95 % CI, 0.71-0.87), psoriasis (aOR, 0.85; 95 % CI, 0.75-0.96), and hepatitis C (aOR, 0.40; 95 % CI, 0.39-0.46), had reduced odds of moderate- to high-intensity statin treatment. Utilization of ezetimibe was rare (2.0 %). LDL-C control was suboptimal at baseline (37.0 % and 27.9 % had LDL-C ≥100 mg/dL and <70 mg/dL, respectively). At 1-year follow-up, the rate of moderate- to high-intensity statin therapy utilization was 65.3 %.

CONCLUSION

Increased efforts are needed to improve LDL-C control and LLT use for primary prevention of ASCVD in adults with type 2 diabetes, in particular among women and those with risk-enhancing inflammatory conditions.