In Scotland, it is estimated that more than 620,000 people have heart and circulatory disease, making it the country’s biggest killer. Specifically, an estimated 260,000 Scots suffer or have suffered from angina, and 140,000 have had a heart attack. Coronary heart disease (CHD) costs the economy about £9 billion a year due to the cost to our health care system (approximately £3.2 billion annually with 73% of spent on hospital care costs), and because of working days lost due to death, illness and informal care of people with the disease.

Obesity, physical inactivity and diabetes are significant risk factors for CHD. Obesity and diabetes levels are increasing rapidly and physical activity in Scotland is low. 70% of Scottish women and 58% of men do less than the recommended 30 minutes of activity five times a week.

Following authorisation from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in December 2010, the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) has this month (May 2011) accepted Brilique▼ (ticagrelor) for use in Scotland, the first drug in a new chemical class for heart attack patients.

This means that Scotland has, this month, become the first country in the UK to accept the drug for use among adult patients. Ticagrelor, in combination with aspirin for patients who have had a heart attack or an episode of unstable angina, was shown (in the PLATO study) to reduce the combined risk of death from vascular causes, non-fatal heart attack, or non-fatal stroke by 16% at one year compared to the most commonly used treatment following heart attack.