Taking cholesterol-lowering drugs like statins, ezetimibe, or PCSK9 inhibitors can help people live longer—whether they already have heart disease or not—by slightly reducing their risk of dying from any cause or from heart problems.

For people with heart artery disease already taking cholesterol pills, adding one of two other types of cholesterol drugs helps lower their chances of heart attacks and strokes — especially strokes — and gives extra protection for their heart health.

Even if you add extra cholesterol drugs like ezetimibe, bempedoic acid, or PCSK-9 inhibitors to statins, people with heart disease don’t live longer — it helps prevent heart attacks, but doesn’t seem to help them survive overall.

For people at very high risk of heart problems, taking cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins plus another drug called ezetimibe lowers bad cholesterol more than taking statins alone — by about 13 points on average — and helps them hit their cholesterol targets better.

For people with heart disease, adding certain cholesterol-lowering drugs to their usual statin medicine cuts the chance of having a stroke by 23%—and this protection might be even better than for heart attacks.

For people at very high risk of heart problems, taking a cholesterol drug (statin) with another drug (ezetimibe) is just as safe and easy to stick with as taking the statin alone.