Dr Darryl Sleep: Identifying and Treating Elevated LDL-C in Patients Can Mitigate Heart Attack Risk

Identifying elevated LDL-C levels in patients and treating them with evolocumab can potentially mitigate and reduce the rate of ischemic events, said Darryl Sleep, MD, senior vice president for global medical and chief medical officer at Amgen.

Transcript

Can you discuss the significance of the evolocumab FOURIER clinical trial findings and their impact on patients in lowering high LDL-C and subsequent risk of myocardial infarction?

Patients post-myocardial infarction are at significant risk for developing additional ischemic heart disease or myocardial infarction. This is 1 of those areas where it's been clearly identified as a risk factor, and LDL-C is an easily measured biomarker that clearly demonstrates increased risk as well. So, what we've done in the FOURIER study is really identify in this analysis those patients that have had a recent myocardial infarction within the first year of the infarction with elevated LDL-C that number 1, the closer you are to the index event, the more likely you are to have a subsequent event. Elevated LDL-C clearly puts you at risk for that subsequent event and [through] aggressive treatment of patients with elevated LDL-C in that setting, you can actually mitigate, reduce the events, and the rate of events in those patients. So, perfect interface between identifiable marker in patients at risk, a treatment option that can lower LDL-C significantly, and importantly, that reduces the event that you're seeking to prevent.