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-C entered 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.