New Guidelines for Use of Statins by People with HIV to Prevent Cardiovascular Events

The Department of Health and Human Services Guidelines Panel for the Use of Antiretroviral Agents in Adults and Adolescents with HIV (the Panel) has developed recommendations for the use of statin therapy in people with HIV, in collaboration with representatives from the American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association, and the HIV Medicine Association. The new guidelines, Recommendations for the Use of Statin Therapy as Primary Prevention of Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease in People with HIV, were published on February 27, 2024, and can be found online at ClinicalInfo.hiv.gov.

Findings from Large Clinical Trial Informed New Statin Guidelines

The new guidelines were informed by findings from the NIH-supported Randomized Trial to Prevent Vascular Events in HIV or REPRIEVE trial. REPRIEVE found that a statin (pitavastatin), a cholesterol-lowering medication, may offset the high risk of cardiovascular disease in people living with HIV by more than a third, potentially preventing one in five major cardiovascular events (e.g., heart attacks, strokes, or surgery to open a blocked artery) or premature deaths in this population. The study findings were published in the New England Journal of MedicineExit Disclaimer last summer. The Panel and representatives of the three professional medical societies translated those research findings into the clinical practice guidelines published this week.

HIV.gov discussed findings from the REPRIEVE trial in some of our video conversations from last summer’s IAS Conference on HIV Science. See what NIH’s Dr. Carl Dieffenbach and the study’s principal investigator Dr. Steven Grinspoon shared about the REPRIVE Study.

Read more about the REPRIEVE findings here.