Cholesterol level and Q Risk

[diana1998]

I don't remember seeing any discussions about the Q Risk with relation to a stroke or heart attack. My last bloods came back normal, no action. My cholesterol was 5.3 and I'm on 2mg pred.I asked the nurse what the Q risk was and it came up as 25% chance of a stroke or heart attack within the next 10 years. I'm 80 but attend a gym and I'm a healthy weight. Mediterranean diet, low carbs etc, non drinker.

I'm very sensitive to meds of any kind so don't want to take statins. Any opinion about the Q risks please and how others view them?

[SheffieldJane]

You sound like the 75% who are not at risk of a stroke or heart attack with your exemplary lifestyle. X

I would ignore it. I don’t take statins either, I have read too may negative articles recently.

[diana1998 in reply to SheffieldJane]

Thank you. So have I. I know someone who was in a wheelchair through statins having been very active. Hospital couldn't find out what the problem was after loads of tests but after 9 months, he suddenly stopped statins and he returned back to normal. Quite bizarre. This was a number of years ago.

[PMRpro Ambassador]

Never heard of it to be honest but we tend not to discuss statins from that viewpoint here as this isn't a cardiovascular forum, it is for PMR and GCA, rheumatological conditions, and statins are an incidental.

Similar symptoms to PMR may be caused by statins and the first I was put on, long after PMR had started, nearly had me in a wheelchair after about 10 days at half dose! I stopped it and got back to where I had been before in a few months. I tried another and that coincided with a massive flare of the PMR, That isn't proof of causation but it was enough for me - and my doctors - to label my notes as reactive to statins and I was put on ezetimibe which as far as I can tell has caused no such problems.

It varies - some people don't do well on one but are fine with another, One gentleman on here has been on statins and fine for years - but it took 3 or 4 tries to find one that agreed with him. In your position I probably wouldn't rush to start a statin - what about agreeing to try diet and adding plant sterols such as Benecol or Danacol products and see what happens? They don't need to know your diet is already probably as good as it gets, humour them!

[diana1998 in reply to PMRpro]

Many thanks. I remember years ago when my Q Risk after an annual Health Check was 10%! But the nurse said it goes up with age anyway. So will just ignore it. 👍 We've got to snuff it with something anyway.

[PMRpro Ambassador in reply to diana1998]

Have some reading!

thelancet.com/pdfs/journals...

"Prediction is always challenging. Consequently, riskprediction tools have their handicaps; for example, the 5–10 year absolute risk score in younger individuals is an under-prediction of their lifetime risk for a slowly developing disease such as CVD.1 Another handicap is that many prediction score systems are not tailored to people older than 65–79 years (QRISK3 is designed for people aged up to 84 years). Moreover, most older people have high calculated risk on account of their age alone (reflecting time of accumulated risk), possibly leading to unnecessary medicalisation of old age. Another aspect related to older age is competing risk: those with high CVD risk could nevertheless die of something else. Finally, several traditional risk factors, such as cholesterol levels, blood pressure and body-mass index (BMI), might have weakened predictive power in old age because of reverse epidemiology"

[Floridafan]

I very recently had a QRISK test and received a phone call suggesting that I took statins as my risk was 13%. I thought this was rather high considering that my previous one had been 7.9%.

Didn’t like the idea of taking statins so I asked her to go through all the details of my results and discovered that they had me down as being a smoker in the past (I have never ever smoked), that took my risk down to 12%. And I questioned my blood pressure readings which were in the normal range, but were much higher than when I test my blood pressure at home. This took my QRISK down to 9.5% so low and behold I don’t need to take statins now for which I am grateful.

My stepmother used to follow her doctors advice to the letter and never questioned anything. I’m so glad I did 😀