title: Treatment of dyslipidemia: the problem of reaching the goal.
abstract: Dyslipidemia is a major contributor to cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Although awareness of the importance of the risk of dyslipidemia has increased, treatment of dyslipidemia has not improved accordingly. Even though the actual number of individuals receiving treatment has increased, the proportion of those who are treated but did not reach the recommended treatment goal, is still disturbing. This problem is highlighted in this issue of Atherosclerosis by the article of S. Zhao et al. who in a cross-sectional study involving 25,697 Chinese individuals found that overall 38.5% of those receiving lipid-lowering treatment did not achieve the treatment goal for low density lipoprotein. Of particular concern is the authors' finding that the majority of these were individuals with a high cardiovascular risk and/or with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Some of the main reasons for this problem relate to patients' compliance with treatment and inertia on the side of physicians and patients to increase the dose of a given medication or move to a combination treatment. New medications with various and different pharmacological modes of actions and increased possibility for combination treatment may help to improve the treatment for dyslipidemia.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada. Electronic address: pbolli@xenomix.com.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Bolli
mesh_terms: D050171:Dyslipidemias / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000453:epidemiology*; D006801:Humans; D019161:Hydroxymethylglutaryl-CoA Reductase Inhibitors / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D000960:Hypolipidemic Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use*
chemical_list: D019161:Hydroxymethylglutaryl-CoA Reductase Inhibitors; D000960:Hypolipidemic Agents
keywords: DYSIS study; Dyslipidemia; Dyslipidemia treatment goals