In a recent study involving thousands of healthy patients, it has been claimed that half of the middle-aged people have no coronary artery calcium, and only a few of them suffer a heart attack or a stroke. Published in The Lancet on Friday, the study has expressed concern over the fact that a large number of people are using statins to cure heart problems.

For the study, Dr. Michael Blaha at John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and colleagues examined 2, 083 people with an average age of 67, who had low cholesterol, were not on statins and were non-diabetic.

The team found that 46% had high levels of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP), thereby making them eligible for statin therapy. With the help of cardiac CT scans, the team found that 47% of those patients had a coronary artery protein (CAC) level of zero, and thus, they had no heart illness.

Further, it’s being claimed that the cholesterol-lowering drugs must be given to those whose health would genuinely be improved with that, though some experts are not in favor of that as they feel that the test for coronary artery calcium is an expensive scan, unlikely accessible for a majority of patients.

Reacting to the study, Prof. Peter Weissberg, Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation, said: “The greatest challenge for preventive medicine is identifying people who are at highest risk of heart disease and who should therefore be given drugs, particularly statins, to reduce that risk”.