Cholesterol and blood pressure drugs are blunting obesity's heart risks, study finds
A large observational study published July 1 in The Lancet finds that widespread use of statins and blood pressure medications has substantially narrowed the cardiovascular gap between people with obesity and their normal-weight peers, STAT reports . The NCD Risk Factor Collaboration analyzed data on roughly one million participants across England, the US, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Finland from 1990 to 2024.
By 2024, adults in their 60s and 70s with obesity had blood pressure and cholesterol readings similar to — or in some cases lower than — those with normal body-mass index. The likely driver is treatment coverage: among people over 70, 70 to 72 percent of those with obesity were taking blood pressure drugs or statins, versus 40 to 48 percent of normal-weight peers.
The finding is a marker of how far cheap, routine drug therapy has shifted risk that was once tied directly to weight. But the study is observational and cannot establish cause, and the authors are explicit that it should not be read as evidence that obesity is now harmless — only that some of its cardiovascular consequences are increasingly being managed pharmacologically. Obesity’s other effects, from joint disease to certain cancers, are untouched by these drugs.