Both American (2019 ACC/AHA Guideline on the Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease) and European (2019 ESC/EAS Guidelines for the management of dyslipidemias) guidelines currently recommended moderate-intensity lipid-lowering (goal for LDL-C <2.6 mmol/L or 30%-50% reduction from baseline) for primary prevention in the population at intermediate (or borderline) 10-year ASCVD risk, but the residual risk in this group of the population remains to be explored, especially in a subset with only nonobstructive atherosclerotic plaques(luminal stenosis<50%) detected by CCTA, for whom further risk stratification and precise interventions for primary prevention are lacking.~CCTA could show accurate images of patients' early coronary atherosclerotic lesions, and provides a wealth of image-based anatomical and functional information including plaque burden (total plaque volume, calcification score, segment involvement score, etc.), plaque composition, high-risk plaque characteristics, luminal stenosis, and CT-FFR. With this complete imaging information on CCTA, there is an urgent need to investigate primary prevention strategies and the evidence-based rationale for performing precise risk stratification in low to intermediate risk populations with nonobstructive coronary atherosclerotic lesions using CCTA.~A prospective, randomized, open-label, blinded endpoint analysis (PROBE) will be conducted in the population at clinical low to intermediate 10-year ASCVD risk with nonobstructive coronary atherosclerotic lesions, predominantly non-calcified plaques detected by CCTA. And the purpose of this study is to demonstrate that intensive lipid-lowering could slow down plaque progression and reduce the incidence of MACE in the target population, which provides an evidence-based rationale for further risk re-stratification. Enrolled people will be randomized into the intervention group (goal for LDL-C <1.8 mmol/L or ≥50% reduction from baseline) and control group (goal for LDL-C <2.6 mmol/L or 30%-50% reduction from baseline).
Current guidelines recommend moderate-intensity lipid-lowering therapy (goal for LDL-C <2.6 mmol/L or 30%-50% reduction from baseline) for patients with intermediate 10-year ASCVD risk. In these patients, early coronary atherosclerotic plaques (luminal stenosis<50%) detected by coronary CT angiography are common, but further interventions are lacking. This study aims to analyze whether intensive lipid-lowering therapy (goal for LDL-C <1.8 mmol/L or ≥50% reduction from baseline) could delay the progression of coronary atherosclerotic lesions and reduce the adverse cardiovascular events in these target patients.