
ENGLAND: Draft updated guidance from NICE recommends that the risk threshold at which statins should be offered to prevent cardiovascular events can now also be considered for people at a lower threshold, meaning that around 15mn more individuals could be eligible. Until now, people with a >10% risk over 10 years of a cardiovascular event should be offered a statin. However, an independent committee considered new evidence on their side-effects and safety.
While statins can cause muscle pains, the best evidence shows that most people do not experience this and many more will get muscle pains whether they take statins or not than have muscle pain caused by statins. While the draft guidance continues to recommend that risk factors which can be addressed should be managed, including stopping smoking, reducing alcohol consumption, taking exercise and eating a healthy diet, atorvastatin 20mg can now be considered as part of shared decision-making for people with a <10% risk over 10 years of a first heart attack or stroke.
Nicholas Hall Writes: Last week I wrote about macro factors that might influence consumer health markets in the near future. Healthcare in general will experience both mega-threats and opportunities: a threat in the sense that inadequate provision of hospitals and general practitioners is likely to erode standards of public health, with serious political and economic consequences; but that in a more localised sense there is a huge opportunity for OTC players to promote the concept of self-care to a demographically-unbalanced population which increasingly will have to take better care of its own health.
Our lead story this week tracks the move towards even more statin prescriptions in the UK. Could this benefit CHC, bearing in mind that the low-dose statin Zocor Heart-Pro is a failed switch from the past? Yes, I believe there is room for optimism, not least because renewed consumer interest in cardiovascular health could drive demand for an OTC polypill containing a statin and other beneficial ingredients such as omega-3 and possibly low-dose aspirin. Regulators stamped down on earlier attempts to create a polypill, but a generation later – and with declining standards of public health – who can say for sure that a revived interest in this concept would necessarily fail?
Explore innovation by marketer, region and country in the 2023 edition of our Innovation in CHC report, coming soon! Drawn from CHC New Products Tracker, this report showcases 10 major ingredient trends, 5 delivery format trends and 100 key innovations from 2022. For more information, or to pre-order your copy with the pre-publication discount, please contact melissa.lee@NicholasHall.com.