Maximizing therapeutic envelope for prevention of cardiovascular disease: role of polypill.

Cardiovascular-disease prevention is often inadequate due to several factors. Lack of professional adherence to guidelines, unaffordable medication, and lack of patients' adherence to treatment are the most important. It has been suggested that an affordable, fixed-dose combination drug containing evidence-based active compounds could improve cardiovascular prevention by improving patients' adherence to treatment. The available evidence suggests that the polypill strategy can achieve this objective and it will gain a place in the therapeutic armamentarium for the prevention of cardiovascular events in patients at high risk.