Lucia Merkovská, Daniel Pella, Lucia Jedličková
Disorders of lipid metabolism are among the most important risk factors for cardiovascular disease, which still are the main cause of death worldwide. There are non-pharmacological and pharmacological methods of their treatment, which effects are mostly complementary. Despite higher availability of various lipid-lowering therapy and increase of their use in clinical practice, there is a large proportion of patients who remained in the high “residual cardiovascular risk.” Currently, statins are in front of all lipid-lowering agents. Statins significantly lower LDL cholesterol, but in terms of effect on levels of triglycerides and HDL cholesterol, their impact is much lower. Thus, there still exists a serious problem, especially in the patients with atherogenic dyslipidaemia typical for metabolic syndrome patients. Therefore, greater importance has been recently given to combined therapy with lipid-lowering agents. Lipid lowering drugs frequently do have important pleiotropic effects. This article provides an overview of current lipid-lowering agents, comparison of their effects and safety.