MONDAY, March 16, 2026 (HealthDay News) -- In a clinical practice guideline issued by the American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association, and nine other leading medical associations, updated recommendations are presented for managing dyslipidemia. The clinical practice guideline was published online March 13 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and in Circulation.
Roger S. Blumenthal, M.D., from the Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease in Baltimore, and colleagues updated guidelines on the management of blood cholesterol.
The authors note that to reduce lifelong risk for prolonged exposure to atherogenic lipoproteins, dyslipidemia should be treated earlier. They recommend that health behavior counseling for lifestyle optimization should start in youth; in youth with familial hypercholesterolemia and in young adults with low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) ≥160 mg/dL or a strong family history of premature atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD), pharmacotherapy should be considered early. For primary prevention in adults aged 30 to 79 years, the more contemporary American Heart Association Predicting Risk of cardiovascular disease EVENTs (PREVENT) equations should be used instead of the older Pooled Cohort Equations to guide lipid-lowering therapy (LLT). For adults with borderline ASCVD risk, LDL-lowering therapy can be considered, while it should be considered for those with intermediate risk after a clinician-patient discussion. To guide LLT, LDL-C and non-high-density lipoprotein treatment goals are recommended; once these goals are met, apolipoprotein B testing can be useful to identify those with residual elevated lipoprotein-related risk.
"While we want to try to optimize healthy lifestyle habits as the first step to lower cholesterol, we realize that if lipid numbers aren't within the desirable range after a period of lifestyle optimization, we should consider adding lipid-lowering medication earlier than we would have considered 10 years ago," Blumenthal said in a statement.
Several authors disclosed ties to the pharmaceutical industry.