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VIDEO: PCSK9 inhibitor ‘attractive’ treatment option for statin intolerance
CHICAGO — In this video exclusive, Kim A. Eagle, MD, director of the Frankel Cardiovascular Center at the University of Michigan, discusses results of the GAUSS-3 trial, which showed that statin-intolerant patients experienced greater LDL reductions while treated with the PCSK9 inhibitor evolocumab compared with ezetimibe.
Although statins have been demonstrated to lower cholesterol by about 30%, 5% to 10% of patients are intolerant to statins, said Eagle, who is also editor of ACC.org. PCSK9 inhibitors show “promise for the treatment of patients [with hyperlipidemia], but very few studies have actually looked at whether they might be particularly applicable to patients who are intolerant of our current standard treatment with statins,” he said.
The randomized GAUSS-3 trial examined treatment with evolocumab (Repatha, Amgen) vs. ezetimibe (Zetia, Merck) in this patient population.
Although GAUSS-3 did not have a sufficient population to examine endpoints concerning MI, CV death, angina or stroke, Eagle said the study is interesting in terms of this class of agents being “very attractive” for the large number of patients who have statin intolerance.