Drugs that lower cholesterol and can dramatically reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes could become available from high-street chemists within a year.
Government experts are considering whether the drugs known as statins should be reclassified as a pharmacy drug, instead of being available only on prescription, in order to save thousands more lives from heart disease.
The move follows growing evidence that statins confer huge health benefits on patients whose cholesterol levels are too high. Many doctors believe that they also work to protect the heart at an even earlier stage, by helping prevent atheroma, the furring-up of arteries.
The Committee for the Safety of Medicines has been meeting to look at the benefits and risks of reclassifying the drugs, which would allow them to be sold in pharmacies. But some experts are worried that patients would no longer be receiving the blood tests and other medical advice which they are currently given before a prescription is written out.
The committee, headed by Professor Sir Michael Rawlins, has been meeting to consider the matter and, if they decide the benefits would outweigh the risks, the issue will go out to general consultation.
Statins are seen as one of the great medical advances of the past 50 years. By lowering cholesterol levels, they can reduce heart attacks and strokes by up to 15 per cent for every year that they are taken.
It has been estimated that if an extra ten million high-risk people were to go on to statin treatment, this would save about 50,000 lives annually in Britain.
With heart disease now the biggest killer in Britain, the Government is keen to use medications more widely to prevent heart attacks and hospital admissions.
Although the bill for statins has risen to £700 million a year, the tendency is still for doctors to underprescribe them, as it can push up the costs for GPs' practices. National guidelines state that people who are known to have coronary heart disease should reduce their total cholesterol to less than 5 mmol/L (millimols per litre) and their LDL (low density lipoprotein cholesterol) to below 3 mmol/L, or by 25 per cent.
Around one fifth of the British population has cholesterol levels higher than they should be, and most of them will end up needing medical treatment. Research suggests that a regime of exercise and diet alone will not make a big cut in cholesterol, and that statins are the best approach.
Around one million people in Britain are on the drugs, but it is estimated that, if an extra 10 million high-risk people were to go on to statin treatment, this would save about 50,000 lives a year. Cardiovascular disease causes more than 270,000 deaths a year, or about four out of 10 of all deaths. It kills 50,000 more women each year than cancer and is responsible for a third of premature deaths in men and more than a quarter in women.
