Potential for residual cardiovascular risk reduction: Eligibility for icosapent ethyl in the VERTIS CV population with type 2 diabetes and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.

Keywords: cardiovascular risk reduction; icosapent ethyl; REDUCE-IT; type 2 diabetes; VERTIS CV EN cardiovascular risk reduction icosapent ethyl REDUCE-IT type 2 diabetes VERTIS CV 1398 1402 5 04/04/23 20230501 NES 230501 BACKGROUND Cardiovascular (CV) disease is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality for people with type 2 diabetes (T2D).[[1]] Accordingly, CV risk reduction is a key component of the standard of care for T2D, with professional society treatment recommendations endorsing a multifactorial approach that simultaneously targets individual atherosclerotic CV disease (ASCVD) risk factors.[[1], [3]] These risk factors include obesity, physical inactivity, smoking, hypertension, hyperglycaemia, insulin resistance/hyperinsulinaemia and dyslipidaemia.[[1], [3]] With regards to lipids, statins are the mainstay for ASCVD risk reduction for people with T2D, but even when low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels are controlled, residual ASCVD risk remains.[[5]] Results from the REDUCE-IT trial demonstrated that icosapent ethyl (IPE) decreased the risk of ischaemic events, including CV death, in a population with established ASCVD or with diabetes plus other ASCVD risk factors, whose LDL-C levels on statin treatment were 41-100 mg/dl with elevated fasting triglyceride (TG) levels (135-499 mg/dl).[7] The prevalence of these criteria in populations with T2D and ASCVD is not well documented. These data show that 29.6% of participants in VERTIS CV would be eligible for IPE therapy based on the REDUCE-IT trial inclusion criteria. The REDUCE-IT trial inclusion criteria were met by 29.6% of the overall VERTIS CV population at baseline, with a further 30.3% not meeting the full REDUCE-IT criteria but having baseline TG >135 mg/dl (Figure 1). [Extracted from the article]