— August 29, 2026 · Statins After 70: The STAREE Trial Finds Fewer Heart Attacks but No Gain in Disability-Free Survival

Table of Contents

1. STAREE at a Glance
2. What Was Done
3. What Was Found, Number by Number
4. Side Effects in the Trial
5. How Statins Work
6. How It Fits With Earlier Research
7. What It Cannot Show
8. What the Researchers and Agencies Said
9. What Remains Unknown
10. Sources and Primary Documents
11. Key Research Papers
12. Connections
13. Featured Videos

STAREE at a Glance

• The paper — Zoungas S, Wolfe R, Moran C, et al. “Atorvastatin, Cardiovascular Events, and Disability-free Survival in Older Adults.” New England Journal of Medicine 395(13):1259–1272. Online August 29, 2026; print issue October 1, 2026.
• Where it was presented — ESC Congress 2026, Munich (August 28–31), Hot Line 2 session, August 29, 2026.
• Who took part — 9,971 adults aged 70 or older living independently in the community, recruited through general practices across Australia, with no history of cardiovascular disease, diabetes or dementia. Mean age 74.7 years; 51.9% women; 40% aged 75 or older.
• Design — double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled; atorvastatin 40 mg once daily (4,984 people) or identical placebo (4,987 people); median follow-up 5.9 years.
• First main result — major cardiovascular events in 297 people on atorvastatin and 412 on placebo (10.9 vs 15.5 per 1,000 person-years); hazard ratio 0.70 (95% CI 0.61 to 0.82), a 30% relative reduction. In plain counts, 6.0% vs 8.3% of participants.
• Second main result — death, dementia or persistent physical disability in 637 vs 676 people (21.6 vs 23.0 per 1,000 person-years); hazard ratio 0.94 (95% CI 0.84 to 1.05); P = 0.25. No significant difference.
• Safety — serious adverse events in 2.7% of both groups; muscle, liver and diabetes-related adverse events more common on atorvastatin.
• Funding — Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council and the National Heart Foundation of Australia; sponsor Monash University. Registry: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02099123.

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What Was Done

Between July 2015 and March 2023 the STAREE team enrolled people aged 70 and over through their own family doctors. Entry required living independently and managing at least five of six basic daily activities on a standard checklist (the Katz activities of daily living). People were excluded if they had ever had a heart attack, angina, a stent or bypass, heart failure, a stroke or mini-stroke, narrowed neck arteries, an aortic aneurysm or blocked leg arteries; if they had diabetes, dementia or a low score on a memory screening test; if their total cholesterol was above 7.5 mmol/L (about 290 mg/dL); or if they had moderate or severe kidney or liver disease, an illness likely to be fatal within five years, or a need for certain drugs that interact with statins. People already on a statin could join only if they were willing to stop it; according to reports of the full paper, 5.2% had taken one before.

Before randomisation, every candidate took a placebo tablet for four weeks to show they could take a daily pill. The protocol explains that a dummy tablet was used for this run-in, rather than the real drug, so that people who would not tolerate a statin were not screened out in advance, which keeps the results closer to real-world use. Participants were then assigned at random, half to atorvastatin and half to an identical placebo. Everyone started on one 20 mg tablet a day for four weeks and, after a telephone check on tolerability, moved to two tablets (40 mg). The dose could be cut back to one tablet, or paused, to manage side effects. Neither the participants nor the study staff knew who was taking which.

Participants were followed every six months by phone or in person. Anyone who developed a clear medical reason for a statin, such as a heart attack or stroke, could be prescribed one openly by their own doctor; they then stopped the study tablets but stayed in the study.

The trial had two co-primary end points:

• Major cardiovascular events — death from cardiovascular causes, a non-fatal heart attack or stroke, or a coronary revascularisation (a stent or bypass to reopen a heart artery).
• Disability-free survival — staying alive without dementia and without persistent physical disability. The protocol defines dementia as a clinical diagnosis, or loss of thinking ability at least two standard deviations below population norms that interferes with independence. Persistent physical disability means losing the ability to do a basic daily activity (walking, bathing, moving from bed to chair, using the toilet, dressing or eating) at two visits six months apart.

The two were tested in a fixed order (a “hierarchical testing plan”); reports of the full paper say major cardiovascular events came first, with disability-free survival formally tested only if the first result was significant. The trial was originally planned for 18,000 people in several countries. The protocol records that funding for recruitment outside Australia did not come through, and in July 2021 the target was reduced so that the trial could be completed in Australia alone.

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What Was Found, Number by Number

The two main results come from the paper’s abstract. The breakdown of individual outcomes is taken from independent reports of the full paper (an Australian medical news outlet, a Spanish cardiology news site and a journal-club summary); where more than one gives a figure, they agree. Rates are events per 1,000 person-years, atorvastatin first.

• Major cardiovascular events (first main end point) — 297 vs 412 people; 10.9 vs 15.5; hazard ratio 0.70 (95% CI 0.61 to 0.82; P < 0.001). That is about 4.6 fewer events per 1,000 people per year, and 2.3 percentage points fewer people over the median 5.9 years (6.0% vs 8.3%). Two of the reports give a number needed to treat of 37: about 37 people took atorvastatin for the length of the trial for each major event avoided.
• Heart attack (fatal or non-fatal) — 2.9 vs 5.0; hazard ratio 0.57 (0.43 to 0.75).
• Coronary revascularisation — 4.0 vs 7.0; hazard ratio 0.57 (0.45 to 0.72).
• Stroke (fatal or non-fatal) — 4.4 vs 5.1; hazard ratio 0.87 (0.68 to 1.11), not statistically significant.
• Cardiovascular death — 2.4 vs 2.4; hazard ratio 1.00 (0.72 to 1.37). One report counts 74 cardiovascular deaths in each group.
• Death, dementia or persistent disability (second main end point) — 637 vs 676 people; 21.6 vs 23.0; hazard ratio 0.94 (0.84 to 1.05; P = 0.25).
• Death from any cause — 13.0 vs 14.3; hazard ratio 0.91 (0.79 to 1.04).
• Dementia — 10.6 vs 10.3; hazard ratio 1.03 (0.87 to 1.21); 290 vs 280 people.
• Persistent physical disability — 2.2 vs 2.9; hazard ratio 0.74 (0.53 to 1.04).
• Hospital admission for any reason — 148.9 vs 150.9; hazard ratio 0.99 (0.94 to 1.04).
• Cholesterol — LDL cholesterol at entry averaged 3.27 mmol/L (126 mg/dL). Over the trial it fell by an average of 48 mg/dL (1.23 mmol/L) on atorvastatin and 16 mg/dL (0.42 mmol/L) on placebo, a between-group difference of 31 mg/dL (95% CI 30 to 33). Total cholesterol fell by 53 vs 18 mg/dL.
• By age — the cardiovascular benefit was similar in people aged 70 to 74 (hazard ratio 0.67, 0.53 to 0.83) and those 75 or older (0.73, 0.59 to 0.89), according to the Spanish report; the Australian report also describes it as similar across age groups, blood pressure, body-mass index and kidney function.

Why fewer heart attacks did not add healthy years

The fall in cardiovascular events came mainly from fewer non-fatal heart attacks and fewer artery-opening procedures. Cardiovascular deaths did not change, and the reduction in strokes was small and uncertain. The authors, as quoted by the American College of Cardiology’s news service, write that the lower incidence of major non-fatal events “did not result in a corresponding improvement in disability-free survival,” and that “explanations for this result might include the fact that 80% of the deaths in the trial were from non-cardiovascular causes.” The Spanish report adds that dementia accounted for 548 of the 1,313 first events in the disability-free-survival measure. In other words, most of what that measure counted (non-cardiac deaths and dementia) was not the kind of event the drug clearly prevented.

The protocol’s planning assumed that, among people actually taking the tablets, a statin would cut the disability-free-survival end point by 18%. The trial’s result was a 6% reduction, with a confidence interval running from 16% lower to 5% higher risk, so it did not find the effect it was designed to detect, though it cannot rule out a modest one.

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Side Effects in the Trial

The abstract reports serious adverse events in 131 people on atorvastatin (2.7%) and 129 on placebo (2.7%), with musculoskeletal, hepatobiliary (liver and bile) and diabetes-related adverse events more common on atorvastatin. Reports of the full paper give the breakdown (atorvastatin vs placebo):

• Any adverse event — 63.0% vs 58.7%. “Medically important” adverse events 8.8% vs 6.7%. Stopping the trial tablets because of an adverse event 7.2% vs 6.1%.
• Muscle and joint — any 32.0% vs 29.4%; medically important 1.1% vs 0.9%; serious 0.2% in each group. According to the Spanish report, 46.1% of participants already reported muscle symptoms at their first visit, before taking any tablet.
• Liver and bile — any 3.3% vs 0.9%; medically important 1.4% vs 0.3%.
• Diabetes-related — any 4.0% vs 2.7%; medically important 1.1% vs 0.7%. Nobody had diabetes at entry.
• Nervous system — 23.5% in both groups.

These findings line up with large pooled analyses of earlier blinded statin trials by the Cholesterol Treatment Trialists’ (CTT) Collaboration. In 19 placebo-controlled trials (123,940 people), muscle pain or weakness was reported by 27.1% on a statin and 26.6% on placebo; the analysis estimated that only about one in 15 such reports among statin users was actually caused by the drug, with a small excess in the first year and none on average after that (2022). Higher-intensity regimens, which include 40 to 80 mg of atorvastatin, carried a slightly larger excess. A 2024 CTT analysis found that statins raised new diagnoses of diabetes by 10% at low or moderate intensity and 36% at high intensity, mostly in people whose blood sugar was already near the diagnostic line. A 2026 CTT analysis of 66 further side effects listed on statin labels found excesses for only four, chiefly abnormal liver blood tests (rate ratio 1.41), and found that the blinded data did not support a causal link with cognitive impairment, depression, sleep disturbance or nerve damage.

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How Statins Work

LDL cholesterol particles carry cholesterol in the blood. When they lodge in the wall of an artery they help build the fatty plaque of atherosclerosis, which can narrow a heart artery or rupture and trigger a clot, the usual cause of a heart attack. Statins block HMG-CoA reductase, an enzyme the liver uses early in its cholesterol-making chain (the mevalonate pathway). With less cholesterol made inside it, the liver pulls more LDL out of the blood, and the LDL level on a lipid panel falls. The STAREE protocol expected the 40 mg dose to produce a 30% to 50% reduction in LDL.

In the CTT Collaboration’s 2019 pooled analysis of 28 trials, each 1.0 mmol/L (about 39 mg/dL) of LDL lowering went with 21% fewer major vascular events. In STAREE the average between-group difference in LDL was about 31 mg/dL (0.8 mmol/L). That figure averages everyone assigned to each group, including people who stopped their tablets or were later prescribed an open statin.

Coenzyme Q10. The same pathway that statins slow down also leads to coenzyme Q10, a molecule the cell’s energy factories use. A 2007 review notes that, because of this common pathway, coenzyme Q10 levels “are also affected” by statins and that its blood levels fall during treatment. Part of that fall may simply reflect lower LDL, which carries most coenzyme Q10 in the blood, but the review notes lower levels inside blood cells (platelets and lymphocytes) as well. Whether this explains statin muscle symptoms is unsettled. A 2015 meta-analysis of six trials (302 patients) found no significant effect of coenzyme Q10 supplements on muscle pain or on the muscle enzyme creatine kinase; a 2018 meta-analysis of twelve trials (575 patients) reported lower muscle-symptom scores with coenzyme Q10, again with no change in creatine kinase. The STAREE abstract and the reports read for this article do not mention coenzyme Q10. The site’s CoQ10 and statin muscle symptoms page covers that research in more depth.

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How It Fits With Earlier Research

Before STAREE, the evidence for starting a statin in an older person without heart disease came mostly from small slices of larger trials.

• The 2019 CTT meta-analysis pooled 186,854 participants from 28 trials; only 14,483 (8%) were older than 75. Statins reduced major vascular events at every age, but among people without known vascular disease the benefit appeared smaller in older than in younger participants (p for trend 0.05). The authors concluded there was “less direct evidence of benefit among patients older than 75 years who do not already have evidence of occlusive vascular disease,” a gap they said was “now being addressed by further trials.” Statins had no effect at any age on non-vascular deaths or cancer.
• PROSPER (2002) gave pravastatin 40 mg or placebo to 5,804 people aged 70 to 82 who either had vascular disease or had risk factors for it. Over 3.2 years the main end point fell from 473 to 408 events (hazard ratio 0.85, 0.74 to 0.97); stroke did not change (1.03); and pravastatin “had no significant effect on cognitive function or disability.”
• JUPITER, people 70 and older (2010): a later, exploratory look at 5,695 older participants without heart disease (but with raised C-reactive protein and low to average LDL) found fewer first cardiovascular events on rosuvastatin 20 mg (1.22 vs 1.99 per 100 person-years; hazard ratio 0.61, 0.46 to 0.82). The age cut-off was chosen after the trial ended, and the trial was funded by the drug’s manufacturer.
• HOPE-3 (2016), in 12,705 intermediate-risk people in 21 countries, found fewer of the combined outcome of cardiovascular death, non-fatal heart attack or non-fatal stroke on rosuvastatin 10 mg (3.7% vs 4.8%; hazard ratio 0.76), with more muscle symptoms (5.8% vs 4.7%) and no excess of diabetes or cancer. It was funded by a Canadian government research agency and the drug’s manufacturer.
• ASPREE (2018), run by several of the same Australian researchers, used the same disability-free-survival measure to test daily low-dose aspirin in 19,114 older people. Aspirin did not change it (21.5 vs 21.2 per 1,000 person-years; hazard ratio 1.01) and caused more major bleeding (3.8% vs 2.8%).

STAREE is far larger than PROSPER, was designed for this age group from the start, enrolled only people with no vascular disease, and counted dementia and disability as main outcomes. Its cardiovascular result agrees with the direction of the earlier evidence; its disability-free-survival result matches PROSPER’s finding of no effect on thinking or disability, and ASPREE’s experience that a preventive drug in healthy older people did not move this broad measure.

The site’s report on the 2026 cholesterol guideline covers the LDL targets set for adults generally, and the report on the first PCSK9-inhibitor pill, approved by the US Food and Drug Administration on July 15, 2026, covers a different way of lowering LDL.

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What It Cannot Show

• Who was not in it. Participants were independent, community-dwelling Australians. The 2024 baseline paper reports that more than 95% were White and spoke English as their main language, and calls this a limitation. People with diabetes, dementia, heart or vessel disease, significant kidney or liver disease, or limited life expectancy were excluded. The results describe that population, not frail people, care-home residents or people already living with several serious illnesses.
• One drug, one dose, about six years. STAREE tested atorvastatin 40 mg over a median of 5.9 years. It does not show what other statins, other doses or longer treatment do.
• Many people stopped or switched. According to the Spanish report of the full paper, at five years 55.6% of those assigned atorvastatin were still taking it and 47.0% of the placebo group were still taking theirs, and 19.4% of the placebo group had been prescribed an open statin by year five, compared with 9.4% of the atorvastatin group. The analysis compares the groups as randomised, so this crossover tends to shrink differences between them.
• “No difference” is not proof of no effect. For disability-free survival the 95% confidence interval runs from 16% lower to 5% higher risk. The trial found no clear effect; it cannot exclude a small benefit or a small harm.
• Individual outcomes and subgroups are secondary. Results for death, dementia, disability, heart attack, stroke and the age groups are secondary findings. One report notes that the confidence interval for women (hazard ratio 0.85, 0.67 to 1.08) included no effect while that for men (0.62, 0.51 to 0.75) did not, and that subgroup analyses were not adjusted for multiple comparisons and no difference by sex was declared.
• Most of the benefit was non-fatal. The fall in events came from heart attacks and artery-opening procedures; cardiovascular deaths were the same in both groups.
• This report’s own limit. The full paper could not be read for this article. The main results come from the published abstract; the detailed breakdowns come from reports of the paper and are labelled as such.

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What the Researchers and Agencies Said

• The authors’ conclusion (abstract). “Treatment with atorvastatin led to a lower risk of major cardiovascular events than placebo at a median of 5.9 years but did not result in longer disability-free survival among community-dwelling older adults without clinical cardiovascular disease.”
• The lead author. In the ESC press release, Professor Sophia Zoungas of the Monash University School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine said: “The STAREE trial is the first large randomised controlled trial to examine whether statins can be used for primary prevention in older patients to help them live longer in good health.” She added: “With the world’s population ageing at an unprecedented rate, answering fundamental questions about healthy longevity has become a universal imperative,” and “We hope to see updated guidelines to help clinicians make use of these new findings.”
• The European Society of Cardiology. The press release’s key takeaways state that until now “evidence was limited in older adults, who were underrepresented in pivotal trials,” and that “these data may be used to inform treatment guidelines.” Its note to editors says the views are the authors’ own and not necessarily the ESC’s.
• The US Preventive Services Task Force (2022, before STAREE). The Task Force recommends statins for adults aged 40 to 75 with at least one risk factor and an estimated 10-year risk of 10% or more (and selectively at 7.5% to under 10%), but concluded that “the current evidence is insufficient to assess the balance of benefits and harms of initiating a statin for the primary prevention of CVD events and mortality in adults 76 years or older” (an “I statement”).
• Funding and interests. The trial was publicly funded by Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council and the National Heart Foundation of Australia, and the funders had no role in its design, analysis or writing. The lead author reports payments to her university from several pharmaceutical companies for consultancy work outside this trial.

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What Remains Unknown

• PREVENTABLE, the US companion trial. PREVENTABLE is comparing atorvastatin 40 mg with placebo in a planned 20,000 community-dwelling adults aged 75 and older without cardiovascular disease, disability or dementia. Its primary outcome is survival free of new dementia or persisting disability. It is led by Duke University with the US National Institute on Aging and National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. On ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT04262206) its status was “recruiting” (status last verified June 2026), with an estimated primary completion date of December 31, 2026. The STAREE baseline paper points to PREVENTABLE, with its emphasis on recruiting Black and Hispanic participants, for answers in more diverse populations.
• STAREE’s own sub-studies. STAREE-HEART is following 369 participants with heart ultrasound at the start and after three years to see whether atorvastatin affects age-related decline in the heart’s pumping strength. A brain sub-study, STAREE MIND, has separate government funding. Neither was part of the August 29 paper.
• Stopping statins later in life. The opposite question, whether older adults with several illnesses who already take a statin for prevention do as well if they stop, is being tested in the STREAM trial (1,800 people in Switzerland, France and the Netherlands).
• Longer horizons and other groups. Whether benefits or harms change beyond six years, in frail people, in people with diabetes or kidney disease, or in non-White populations is not answered by STAREE.
• Guidelines. The ESC release says the data “may be used to inform treatment guidelines.” No guideline change was part of the August 29 news.

Since then. The paper appeared in the October 1, 2026 print issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (volume 395, issue 13, pages 1259–1272). The PREVENTABLE registry entry was last updated on September 1, 2026, still showing recruitment under way.

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Sources and Primary Documents

The two main results, the trial design and the conclusion were taken from the paper’s abstract, protocol, baseline paper and registry entry. Detailed outcome and side-effect figures from the paywalled full text were taken from the independent reports listed last, which agree with one another.

1. Zoungas S, Wolfe R, Moran C, Nicholls SJ, Cloud GC, Reid CM, et al.; STAREE Investigators (2026). Atorvastatin, Cardiovascular Events, and Disability-free Survival in Older Adults. New England Journal of Medicine 395(13):1259-1272. — doi:10.1056/NEJMoa2607314 · PubMed PMID: 42670961
2. Zoungas S, Curtis A, Spark S, Wolfe R, McNeil JJ, Beilin L, et al.; STAREE investigator group (2023). Statins for extension of disability-free survival and primary prevention of cardiovascular events among older people: protocol for a randomised controlled trial in primary care (STAREE trial). BMJ Open 13(4):e069915. — doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2022-069915 · PubMed PMID: 37012015
3. Zoungas S, Moran C, Curtis AJ, Spark S, Flanagan Z, Beilin L, et al.; STAREE investigator group (2024). Baseline Characteristics of Participants in STAREE: A Randomized Trial for Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease Events and Prolongation of Disability-Free Survival in Older People. Journal of the American Heart Association 13(22):e036357. — doi:10.1161/JAHA.124.036357 · PubMed PMID: 39548016
4. ClinicalTrials.gov. A Study of STAtins for Reducing Events in the Elderly (STAREE), NCT02099123; sponsor Monash University. — ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02099123
5. European Society of Cardiology (August 29, 2026). Cholesterol-lowering medication reduces major cardiovascular events by 30 per cent in older people without known cardiovascular disease. Press release, ESC Congress 2026, Munich. — ESC press release
6. ClinicalTrials.gov. PRagmatic EValuation of evENTs And Benefits of Lipid-lowering in oldEr Adults (PREVENTABLE), NCT04262206; sponsor Duke University. — ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04262206

Reports of the full paper used for secondary outcomes, subgroups, adherence and side-effect detail: The Medical Republic, September 3, 2026 (Statins deliver for the over-70s); Cardioteca, August 29, 2026 (STAREE report, in Spanish); Wiki Journal Club (STAREE summary); American College of Cardiology news, August 29, 2026 (source of the authors’ quotation on non-cardiovascular deaths).

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Key Research Papers

Background papers for this report. Each entry was checked against PubMed and Crossref before it was written down.

1. Cholesterol Treatment Trialists’ Collaboration (2019). Efficacy and safety of statin therapy in older people: a meta-analysis of individual participant data from 28 randomised controlled trials. Lancet 393(10170):407-415. — PubMed PMID: 30712900
2. Shepherd J, Blauw GJ, Murphy MB, Bollen EL, Buckley BM, Cobbe SM, et al. (2002). Pravastatin in elderly individuals at risk of vascular disease (PROSPER): a randomised controlled trial. Lancet 360(9346):1623-1630. — PubMed PMID: 12457784
3. Glynn RJ, Koenig W, Nordestgaard BG, Shepherd J, Ridker PM (2010). Rosuvastatin for primary prevention in older persons with elevated C-reactive protein and low to average low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels: exploratory analysis of a randomized trial. Annals of Internal Medicine 152(8):488-496. — PubMed PMID: 20404379
4. Yusuf S, Bosch J, Dagenais G, Zhu J, Xavier D, Liu L, et al. (2016). Cholesterol Lowering in Intermediate-Risk Persons without Cardiovascular Disease. New England Journal of Medicine 374(21):2021-2031. — PubMed PMID: 27040132
5. McNeil JJ, Woods RL, Nelson MR, Reid CM, Kirpach B, Wolfe R, et al. (2018). Effect of Aspirin on Disability-free Survival in the Healthy Elderly. New England Journal of Medicine 379(16):1499-1508. — PubMed PMID: 30221596
6. Cholesterol Treatment Trialists’ Collaboration (2022). Effect of statin therapy on muscle symptoms: an individual participant data meta-analysis of large-scale, randomised, double-blind trials. Lancet 400(10355):832-845. — PubMed PMID: 36049498
7. Cholesterol Treatment Trialists’ (CTT) Collaboration (2024). Effects of statin therapy on diagnoses of new-onset diabetes and worsening glycaemia in large-scale randomised blinded statin trials: an individual participant data meta-analysis. Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology 12(5):306-319. — PubMed PMID: 38554713
8. Cholesterol Treatment Trialists’ (CTT) Collaboration (2026). Assessment of adverse effects attributed to statin therapy in product labels: a meta-analysis of double-blind randomised controlled trials. Lancet 407(10529):689-703. — PubMed PMID: 41655587
9. US Preventive Services Task Force; Mangione CM, Barry MJ, Nicholson WK, Cabana M, Chelmow D, et al. (2022). Statin Use for the Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease in Adults: US Preventive Services Task Force Recommendation Statement. JAMA 328(8):746-753. — PubMed PMID: 35997723
10. Joseph J, Pajewski NM, Dolor RJ, Sellers MA, Perdue LH, Peeples SR, et al. (2023). Pragmatic evaluation of events and benefits of lipid lowering in older adults (PREVENTABLE): Trial design and rationale. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 71(6):1701-1713. — PubMed PMID: 37082807
11. Hopper I, Marwick TH, Wolfe R, Amerena J, Curtis AJ, Freedman B, et al. (2025). STAREE-HEART: A randomized placebo-controlled trial of atorvastatin effects on a marker of cardiac aging in older individuals without prior cardiovascular disease events: Protocol and baseline description of participants. American Heart Journal 290:140-152. — PubMed PMID: 40516583
12. Aebi PS, Adam L, Haller M, Bardoczi JB, Gencer B, Bonnet F, et al. (2025). Rationale and design of ‘discontinuing statins in multimorbid older adults without cardiovascular disease (STREAM)’: study protocol of a randomised non-inferiority clinical trial. BMJ Open 15(5):e093833. — PubMed PMID: 40409969
13. Littarru GP, Langsjoen P (2007). Coenzyme Q10 and statins: biochemical and clinical implications. Mitochondrion 7 Suppl:S168-S174. — PubMed PMID: 17482884
14. Banach M, Serban C, Sahebkar A, Ursoniu S, Rysz J, Muntner P, et al. (2015). Effects of coenzyme Q10 on statin-induced myopathy: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Mayo Clinic Proceedings 90(1):24-34. — PubMed PMID: 25440725
15. Qu H, Guo M, Chai H, Wang WT, Gao ZY, Shi DZ (2018). Effects of Coenzyme Q10 on Statin-Induced Myopathy: An Updated Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials. Journal of the American Heart Association 7(19):e009835. — PubMed PMID: 30371340

PubMed Topic Searches

1. PubMed: STAREE and atorvastatin in older adults
2. PubMed: Statins for primary prevention in older adults
3. PubMed: Statins, dementia and disability-free survival
4. PubMed: Statin muscle symptoms in blinded trials
5. PubMed: Coenzyme Q10 and statin myopathy

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Connections

• News Archive
• Cholesterol Management — statins and other ways of lowering LDL
• Atherosclerosis — the artery plaque statins act against
• Heart Attack (Myocardial Infarction) — the outcome STAREE reduced most
• Coronary Artery Disease — narrowed heart arteries and revascularisation
• Stroke — types, causes and prevention research
• Cardiovascular Disease — the overview of heart and vessel disease
• Lipid Panel — the blood test that measures LDL cholesterol
• Cholesterol, LDL and the Artery Wall — an interactive animation
• Coenzyme Q10 — the molecule made on the same pathway statins slow
• CoQ10 and Statin Muscle Symptoms — the supplement trials in detail
• Dementia — one part of STAREE’s second main outcome
• Type 2 Diabetes — the condition linked to statin-related rises in blood sugar
• Longevity and Healthy Aging — the site’s section on living longer in good health
• New Cholesterol Guideline Lowers LDL Targets — the March 2026 guideline report
• FDA Approves the First Cholesterol-Lowering PCSK9 Pill — the July 2026 approval report

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