Cognition After Lowering LDL-Cholesterol With Evolocumab

Abstract

Background: The EBBINGHAUS (Evaluating PCSK9 Binding Antibody Influence on Cognitive Health in High Cardiovascular Risk Subjects) trial demonstrated that evolocumab added to a background statin did not affect cognitive performance in a subset of 1,204 patients enrolled in FOURIER (Further Cardiovascular Outcomes Research With PCSK9 inhibitors in Subjects With Elevated Risk).

Objectives: The authors describe patient-reported cognition in the entire FOURIER trial using a self-survey.

Methods: FOURIER was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial involving patients with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels ≥70 mg/dl or non-high-density cholesterol ≥100 mg/dl despite statin therapy. At the final visit, patients completed a 23-item survey on memory and executive domains from the Everyday Cognition (ECog) scale. Patients compared their levels of everyday function at the end of the trial with their levels at the beginning and scored as 1 (no change or improvement), 2 (occasionally worse), 3 (consistently little worse), or 4 (consistently much worse). ECog scores were compared by the 2 randomized treatment arms and by achieved LDL-C at 4 weeks.

Results: A total of 22,655 patients completed ECog after a median duration of 2.2 years. The proportions of patients reporting cognitive decline (ECog score ≥2) at the end of the study were similar for placebo versus evolocumab, both for total score 3.6% versus 3.7% (p = 0.62) and for subdomains (memory, 5.8% vs. 6.0%; total executive, 3.6% vs. 3.7%). The proportion of patients reporting a decline in total cognitive score was similar among the 2,338 patients who achieved very low LDL-C levels (<20 mg/dl) compared to the 3,613 patients with LDL-C ≥100 mg/dl (3.8% vs. 4.5%, p = 0.57).

Conclusions: The addition of evolocumab to maximally tolerated statin therapy had no impact on patient-reported cognition after an average of 2.2 years of treatment, even among patients who achieved LDL-C <20 mg/dl.

Keywords: PCSK9 inhibitor; cholesterol; cognition; lipid-lowering therapies; safety; statin.