Doctors have never had a clean answer for a very common question: does an otherwise healthy person over 75, with no history of heart disease or stroke, actually still need to keep taking a statin? Most of the research statins are based on excluded people this age entirely. A new randomized trial out of France is one of the first to test the question directly, rather than relying on older adults’ medical records after the fact.
Key Takeaways
- In a randomized controlled trial of adults 75 and older with no history of cardiovascular disease, stopping statins didn’t significantly increase deaths, major cardiovascular events, or reduce quality of life over three years compared to continuing them.
- LDL (“bad”) cholesterol jumped about 50% in the group that stopped statins, rising from an average of 115 to 171 mg/dL, while it stayed flat in the group that continued.
- This trial only applies to primary prevention — people without a prior heart attack, stroke, or diagnosed cardiovascular disease. It says nothing about stopping statins in people who’ve already had one of those events.
- The finding sits in real tension with earlier, large observational studies that found statin use was associated with lower mortality in older adults — a reminder that the two types of evidence don’t always agree.
What Made This Study Different
Statins are well-established for preventing heart attacks and strokes in the general population — a 2013 analysis of 18 trials found a 14% reduction in all-cause mortality among statin users, though that data came from a median age of 57. The catch is that most major statin trials simply didn’t enroll people much older than 70 or 80, leaving doctors and patients in their late 70s, 80s, and beyond without solid trial evidence either way. Prior research in this age group has mostly been observational — comparing outcomes between statin users and non-users in existing medical records — which can show a strong association without proving cause and effect, since people who stay on long-term medication may differ from those who don’t in other health-relevant ways.
This new trial, published in The Lancet Healthy Longevity, avoided that problem by actually randomly assigning participants 75 and older, all without prior cardiovascular disease, to either continue or stop their statin. That randomization is what makes this a meaningfully stronger piece of evidence than the observational data that came before it.
What the Trial Found
Over three years, there was no statistically significant difference in deaths, major cardiovascular events, or quality of life between the group that stopped statins and the group that continued. The one clear difference was cholesterol itself: LDL levels in the group that stopped climbed by roughly 50%, while the group that stayed on statins saw no meaningful change. In other words, stopping clearly changed the cholesterol numbers on paper, but that change didn’t translate into a measurable difference in actual health outcomes over the three-year study window.
Why This Doesn’t Settle the Question
It’s worth sitting with the tension here rather than resolving it too quickly. Separate observational research — including a large VA-based study of veterans 75 and older, and a more recent Israeli cohort study of adults 80 and older — has found statin use associated with meaningfully lower mortality in older populations, in the range of 20-30% risk reduction. This new randomized trial points the opposite direction on the “does stopping cause harm” question specifically. Both types of evidence have real value and real limitations: observational studies can be affected by unmeasured differences between statin users and non-users, while even a well-designed randomized trial like this one only followed people for three years, in one country’s population, which may not capture longer-term effects or translate cleanly to other populations with different diets, genetics, or healthcare systems. As one cardiovascular reporter covering the trial put it, the results don’t mean doctors should “tear up statin prescriptions” for older patients.
What This Means for You or an Older Family Member
This trial adds real, higher-quality evidence to a genuinely unsettled question, but it’s not a green light to stop a statin on your own. It’s specifically about primary prevention — people without existing heart disease or stroke history — and even the trial’s own authors frame it as a “non-inferiority” finding (stopping wasn’t clearly worse), not proof that stopping is actively better. If you’re over 75, on a statin, and have never had a heart attack or stroke, this is a legitimate, evidence-backed conversation to have with your doctor about your individual risk factors, life expectancy, and preferences — not a decision to make unilaterally based on a single study.
Source: Boccara, F., et al. (2026). Discontinuation versus continuation of statins for primary prevention in adults aged 75 years and older (SAGE trial). The Lancet Healthy Longevity, published Aug. 11, 2026.