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, I notice the graph rises sharply at about 10% of a ten year risk. Off the top of my head, I believe that the NCEP guidelines are based on starting treatment when the 10 year risk of cardiac event reaches 10%. StrazPer recent discussions on whether statins work at all in decreasing events in low risk patients and safety, etc. Interesting article at... http://www.jr2.ox.ac.uk/bandolier/booth/cardiac/statcalc.html Locke, MD I thought this graph was interesting...mainly because it shows how the NNT goes up, up, up with the lower risk groups.Not sure what the NNT would be for someone with no risk factors -- but one could extrapolate that it would be a high NNT.Figure 1: NNTs for preventing any death, or nonfatal heart attack of stroke at different levels of baseline cardiovascular disease riskThe results in Table 2 use the relative risk of 0.75 for statins for the outcome of fatal and nonfatal heart attacks and strokes. Using BNF definitions of cardiovascular risk and extrapolated 10-year efficacy, the NNT of statins is 5 and below for risks of 40% and above, and 10 falling to 5 at risks of 20-40%.