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.

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 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.

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.

Taking both a statin and ezetimibe together may help prevent strokes better than taking just a statin, especially in people at very high risk.

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.