Then, we assessed statin-specific rate and predictors of poor adherence to treatment in the same population. Our population-based drug-utilization study focused on the change in the GPs’ behaviour on prescribing patter of statin in a primary care database of Southern Italy according to the health policy interventions, both national and regional. Moreover, the results of this study identified several factors as predictors of nonadherence to the treatment, that is generally frequent in newly prescribed patients. As expected, yearly-prevalence of statin use has almost doubled from 2004 to 2010. This is in accordance to previous studies that found a constantly growing use of statins in most European countries since their marketing, including Italy. Several studies explored the prescribing pattern of statins in different Italian regional settings. In particular, a study performed in Northern Italy over a 10-year period reported a 28% average increase per year. As welldocumented, the rapid increase of statin use is attributable to several factors, including the rising awareness of the evidencebased effectiveness of these drugs, the government policies promoting more aggressive management of cardiovascular risk factors, and an increase of life expectancy in patients with CVD. Despite of this overall increasing trend, we observed no change of prevalence in 2005. This result is in line with the health policy intervention issued on November 2004 by AIFA that revised the reimbursement criteria of statins by introducing the evaluation of cardiovascular risk charts in the management of dyslipidaemia. The impact of this regulatory action was confirmed in our analysis of the yearly-incidence of statin use, which significantly decreased in 2005, specifically for women. Indeed, these risk charts led to a reduction in statin use according to the fact that Italian population is thought to have relatively lower cardiovascular mortality than other countries. Moreover, this reduction was mainly related to women on the basis of scientific evidence supporting that cardiovascular risk factors affect more men than women. This peculiar trend was MLN4924 already reported in a study that explored statin utilization in the same setting but over a shorter period of observation . Because our data cover a longer period of time, we were able to analyze the long term effect of this intervention, in terms of management of dyslipidaemic patients according to these new cardiovascular risk charts. Thus, as expected, the incidence of statin use progressively rose from 2006 until 2008, year of the disclosure of new regional policy intervention in Campania Region. The Delibera Regionale, in order to stimulate diagnostic and therapeutic appropriateness in terms of cost-efficacy, stated that the prescription of statins in new users should be considered only after three months-period of diet, physical activity or smoke discontinuation. In addition, when starting a new treatment, the use of one the two free of patent statins, simvastatin and pravastatin.