Cholesterol-lowering drugs should be offered to all men over 50 and women over 60 as an effective “shortcut” to prevent heart disease, a government adviser has proposed.

Roger Boyle, the national director for heart disease and stroke, said that a “blanket approach” to give everyone above a certain age a daily dose of statins would save lives, NHS funding and doctors’ time.

The drugs, taken by an estimated 3 million Britons to tackle high chloresterol, could in future be given in combination with aspirin, folic acid and blood-pressure drugs as an all-in-one “polypill” to prevent heart-related death, Professor Boyle said. He added, however, that the public was not ready for mass medication that would mean millions of people being prescribed the drugs as a preventative measure even in the absence of any symptoms.

Heart disease is Britain’s biggest killer, accounting for one in three deaths. The annual cost to the economy is estimated to be about £26 billion a year, the bulk of which is treatment costs.

Patients as young as 30 who are at particular risk of heart disease could be prescribed statins for the rest of their lives under plans to expand screening for the condition. An estimated 100,000 people are thought to have abnormally high cholesterol owing to a defect inherited from their parents, but about 85,000 of those remain unaware of it, experts say.

Last month the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) published draft guidance stating that millions of people should be assessed to find out how many more would benefit from taking statins. Information routinely collected by GPs could be used to identify those most at risk of cardiovascular disease and to prioritise them for further tests, the watchdog said. Adults who have a 20 per cent or greater risk of developing heart disease over the next decade should be offered statins, it said.

Such a move would double the number of people taking the drug on prescription to about 6 million, which would bring the total cost of the drugs to more than £1 billion a year. Last year the cost of prescribing the drugs was about £550 million. Final guidance from Nice is expected in January.

Statins, which include the brands Zocor, Lipitor and Crestor, have been hailed as a wonder drug since coming into widespread use in the 1990s. They work by reducing levels of low-density lipoprotein, the “bad” form of cholesterol, and are estimated to prevent up to 10,000 deaths a year. Although the drugs have been associated with liver problems, muscle wasting and a slightly elevated risk of cancer, the British Heart Foundation and the Department of Health say that the benefits outweigh any side-effects.

Professor Boyle said at a briefing in London that a person’s risk could simply be determined by an age threshold, about 50 or 55 for men and 60 or 65 for women. In 2003 a team of scientists claimed that such a pill could cut the risk of having a heart attack or a stroke by 80 per cent if taken daily by everyone over 55.

Nick Wald, from the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, said that polypills could prevent up to 200,000 premature deaths in Britain each year. It is being tested in countries including New Zealand and Spain.

Professor Boyle said that he did not believe that the public were ready to have everyone taking a daily pill with the aim of preventing future heart attacks. “I don’t think the general public is ready for the blanket approach where you get to 50 and start taking a pill,” he said. “I think we also are conscious of the accusation of being a nanny state and imposing things on people, so I think choice remains an important thing.”

Peter Weissberg, the medical director of the British Heart Foundation, said that a polypill containing several active ingredients could make it difficult to know what was causing any resulting side-effects. He said that he was not in favour of offering the drugs to everybody over a certain age. “Maybe in ten years’ time when we have more data on statins,” he said.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said: “There is currently no move to change from the individual assessment system that the NHS uses to a blanket approach.”

Common killer

— Cardiovascular disease (CVD), including heart disease and strokes, is the main cause of death in Britain, claiming 208,000 lives a year

— 48 per cent of those deaths are from coronary heart disease, which kills one in five men and one in six women

— 28 per cent are from strokes

— Every year 91,000 men under 75 and 31,000 women suffer heart attacks in Britain

— Death rates from CVD for the under75s have fallen by 24 per cent in the past ten years but are relatively high compared with other countries

Source: British Heart Foundation

Explore Health News

• Swine flu

Times Recommends

• What makes the perfect mum?
• To keep me stress-free, no more awareness days, please
• What do lottery winners buy?