Some critics say the focus is misplaced on treating younger people because they may not adhere to taking a statin or other drug for the rest of their lives. It can be difficult for young people to focus on potential threats to their health in the future, and some of Dr. Rader’s patients have stopped polygenic risk tests even after he recommended them.
The real need, these critics say, is among the vast majority of older people who need cholesterol-lowering treatments but are not getting them or who are abandoning their prescriptions. In one study, about 40 percent of people age 65 and older who had a heart attack needed lipid-lowering drugs for life. Stop taking statins Within two years.
Others, such as Dr. Rita F. Redberg, a cardiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, editor of JAMA Internal Medicine and a critic of the overuse of statins, worries that polygenic risk scores could create new problems.
“There are many downsides to labeling people with a disease,” he said.
Labels, he added, “unintentionally lead to searches for tests and treatments.” And, he said, “because the person is now a ‘patient,’ asymptomatic, in most cases more tests and possible treatments will not make that person feel better.”
People can go from thinking themselves healthy to thinking themselves sick. “Now, whenever they experience life’s normal aches, pains and sprains, they wonder if they have this ‘disease,’” Dr. Redberg said.
“And they may then go to the doctor or even to the emergency room for things that they wouldn’t have before. And that will lead to more tests and procedures with the risk of harming their attendants.”
