Long-term cardiovascular risks and the impact of statin treatment on socioeconomic inequalities: a microsimulation model

Background: UK cardiovascular disease (CVD) incidence and mortality have declined in recent decades but socioeconomic inequalities persist.

Aim: To present a new CVD model, and project health outcomes and the impact of guideline-recommended statin treatment across quintiles of socioeconomic deprivation in the UK.

Design and setting: A lifetime microsimulation model was developed using 117 896 participants in 16 statin trials, 501 854 UK Biobank (UKB) participants, and quality-of-life data from national health surveys.

Method: A CVD microsimulation model was developed using risk equations for myocardial infarction, stroke, coronary revascularisation, cancer, and vascular and non-vascular death, estimated using trial data. The authors calibrated and further developed this model in the UKB cohort, including further characteristics and a diabetes risk equation, and validated the model in UKB and Whitehall II cohorts. The model was used to predict CVD incidence, life expectancy, quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), and the impact of UK guideline-recommended statin treatment across socioeconomic deprivation quintiles.

Results: Age, sex, socioeconomic deprivation, smoking, hypertension, diabetes, and cardiovascular events were key CVD risk determinants. Model-predicted event rates corresponded well to observed rates across participant categories. The model projected strong gradients in remaining life expectancy, with 4-5-year (5-8 QALYs) gaps between the least and most socioeconomically deprived quintiles. Guideline-recommended statin treatment was projected to increase QALYs, with larger gains in quintiles of higher deprivation.

Conclusion: The study demonstrated the potential of guideline-recommended statin treatment to reduce socioeconomic inequalities. This CVD model is a novel resource for individualised long-term projections of health outcomes of CVD treatments.