In the era of precision medicine, treatments that target specific modifiable characteristics of high-risk patients have the potential to lower further the residual risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular events. Correction of atherogenic dyslipidemia, however, remains a major unmet clinical need. Elevated plasma triglycerides, with or without low levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), offer a key modifiable component of this common dyslipidemia, especially in insulin resistant conditions such as type 2 diabetes mellitus. The development of selective peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor alpha modulators (SPPARMα) offers an approach to address this treatment gap. This Joint Consensus Panel appraised evidence for the first SPPARMα agonist and concluded that this agent represents a novel therapeutic class, distinct from fibrates, based on pharmacological activity, and, importantly, a safe hepatic and renal profile. The ongoing PROMINENT cardiovascular outcomes trial is testing in 10,000 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus, elevated triglycerides, and low levels of HDL-C whether treatment with this SPPARMα agonist safely reduces residual cardiovascular risk.

Hundreds of thousands of genetic variants have been reported to cause severe monogenic diseases, but the probability that a variant carrier develops the disease (termed penetrance) is unknown for virtually all of them. Additionally, the clinical utility of common polygenetic variation remains uncertain. Using exome sequencing from 77,184 adult individuals (38,618 multi-ancestral individuals from a type 2 diabetes case-control study and 38,566 participants from the UK Biobank, for whom genotype array data were also available), we apply clinical standard-of-care gene variant curation for eight monogenic metabolic conditions. Rare variants causing monogenic diabetes and dyslipidemias display effect sizes significantly larger than the top 1% of the corresponding polygenic scores. Nevertheless, penetrance estimates for monogenic variant carriers average 60% or lower for most conditions. We assess epidemiologic and genetic factors contributing to risk prediction in monogenic variant carriers, demonstrating that inclusion of polygenic variation significantly improves biomarker estimation for two monogenic dyslipidemias.

Statins are widely used and have been proven to be effective in the prevention of atherosclerotic vascular disease events, primarily by reducing plasma low-density lipoprotein cholesterol concentrations. Although statins are generally well tolerated and present an excellent safety profile, adverse effects from muscle toxicity and liver enzyme abnormalities may occur in some patients. Myopathy and rhabdomyolysis are rare with statin monotherapy at the approved dose ranges, but the risk increases with use of higher doses, interacting drugs and genetic predisposition. Asymptomatic increases in liver transaminases with statin treatment do not seem to be associated with an increased risk of liver disease. Therefore, statin treatment can be safely used in patients with mild to moderately abnormal liver tests that are potentially attributable to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and can improve liver tests and reduce cardiovascular morbidity in this group of patients. The risks of other unfavorable effects such as the slightly increased risk of new-onset diabetes and potentially increased risk of haemorrhagic stroke are much smaller than the cardiovascular benefits with the use of statins.