High-Intensity Statin Reduces the Risk of Mortality Among Chronic Liver Disease Patients With Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease: A Population-Based Cohort Study

Background 2018 American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology cholesterol guideline recommends statin in patients with chronic and/or stable liver disease for secondary prevention of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease yet remains equivocal on the adequate intensity of statin for patients with chronic liver disease (CLD). We aimed to assess the association between statin intensity and mortality among patients with CLD with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Methods and Results We conducted a population-based cohort study in South Korea. We assessed the risk of survival and clinical outcomes using inverse probability of treatment-weighted Cox proportional hazards regression. We also estimated the absolute risk difference between treatment groups based on the Poisson distribution. During an average of 2.35 person-years, 10 442 patients with CLD with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease were identified. Among those patients, 5515 (52.8%) received high-intensity statin, and 4927 (47.2%) received low/moderate-intensity statin. High-intensity statin was associated with lower risk for all-cause mortality (hazard ratio [HR], 0.83 [95% CI, 0.75-0.92]), cardiovascular-cause mortality (HR, 0.85 [0.71-1.01]), liver-cause mortality (HR, 0.72 [0.54-0.97]) compared with low/moderate-intensity statin. Although both hospitalizations for recurrent myocardial infarction and stroke were shown to be increased among high-intensity statin users, effect estimate was homogeneous in the absolute scale (myocardial infarction: HR, 1.12 [1.04-1.19], risk difference, 7.57 [-0.69 to 15.84] per 1000 person-years; stroke: HR, 1.11 [0.97 to 1.27]; risk difference, -1.70 [-5.19 to 1.78]). Conclusions Among patients with CLD with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, high-intensity statin was significantly associated with a lower risk of mortality. These findings herein support the guidelines for statin use in patients with CLD while demonstrating potential benefit of optimal intensity use.