Secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease in China.

Objective: We aimed to estimate the current use of secondary prevention drugs and identify its associated individual characteristics among those with established cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) in the communities of China.
Methods: We studied 2 613 035 participants aged 35-75 years from 8577 communities in 31 provinces in the China Patient-Centered Evaluative Assessment of Cardiac Events Million Persons Project, a government-funded public health programme conducted from 2014 to 2018. Participants self-reported their history of ischaemic heart disease (IHD) or ischaemic stroke (IS) and medication use in an interview. Multivariable mixed models with a logit link function and community-specific random intercepts were fitted to assess the associations of individual characteristics with the reported use of secondary prevention therapies.
Results: Among 2 613 035 participants, 2.9% (74 830) reported a history of IHD and/or IS, among whom the reported use rate either antiplatelet drugs or statins was 34.2% (31.5% antiplatelet drugs, 11.0% statins and 8.3% both). Among the 1 530 408 population subgroups, which were defined by all possible permutations of 16 individual characteristics, reported use of secondary prevention drugs varied substantially (8.4%-60.6%). In the multivariable analysis, younger people, women, current smokers, current drinkers, people without hypertension or diabetes and those with established CVD for more than 2 years were less likely to report taking antiplatelet drugs or statins.
Conclusions: The current use of secondary prevention drugs in China is suboptimal and varies substantially across population subgroups. Our study identifies target populations for scalable, tailored interventions to improve secondary prevention of CVD.
Competing Interests: Competing interests: HK discloses that he is a recipient of research agreements from Medtronic and from Johnson & Johnson (Janssen), through Yale, to develop methods of clinical trial data sharing; is the recipient of a grant from the Food and Drug Administration and Medtronic, through Yale, to develop methods for postmarket surveillance of medical devices; works under contract with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to develop and maintain performance measures; chairs a cardiac scientific advisory board for UnitedHealth; is a participant/participant representative of the IBM Watson Health Life Sciences Board; is a member of the Advisory Board for Element Science and the Physician Advisory Board for Aetna; and is the founder of Hugo, a personal health information platform. FAM has a contract with the American College of Cardiology for his role as the Chief Scientific Advisor of the NCDR. All other authors declare no competing interests.
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