The pharmaceutical industry is desperate to find ways of justifying the use of statins and the most recent attempt relates to breast cancer. According to press reports, a cardiologist, Rahul Potluri, at Aston University has discovered that women with a high level of cholesterol in their blood also have an increased risk of developing breast […]
The Science Media Centre describes itself as: “an independent press office helping to ensure that the public have access to the best scientific evidence and expertise through the news media when science hits the headlines”(1). A recent briefing by the Centre covered the proposal by NICE to extend the use of statins to a much
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has recently proposed new guidelines for the treatment of healthy people with statins. If the new guidance is confirmed it will mean offering statin treatment for the primary prevention of CVD to people who have a 10% or greater 10-year risk of developing CVD. As a
The BMJ has recently announced that it is withdrawing statements which suggest that adverse effects occur as a response to treatment with statins in 18-20% of patients (1). The background is that an article in the BMJ (2) which was published in October 2013 questioned the evidence behind new proposals to extend the routine use
78. Statins…….Is the Edifice Beginning to Crumble? Read More »
Statins are certainly in the news these days. NICE has put forward proposals that all those with a 10% risk of developing heart disease should be treated with statins. Effectively this means that everyone over the age of 50 years, including those who are fit and healthy, would be expected to have the treatment. On
On 23 September 2004 a number of distinguished medical and health professionals wrote a detailed letter to the officials in the US National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) requesting an independent review of the cholesterol guidelines(1). Although this was some years ago the key points raised are just as pertinent to-day as they were when the
The Lyon Heart Study is one of the most successful investigations which demonstrate that a change in diet results in a significant improvement in the survival rates of men and women aged <70 years old who have experienced a heart attack. Volunteers who had survived a heart attack were allocated to either a control group
A major study has reported that women who use statins have a much higher risk of developing diabetes mellitus(DM) when compared women who do not. This is one the results obtained in the Women’s Health Initiative(WHI) which is being conducted in the USA(1). The WHI recruited 161,808 postmenopausal women aged 50 to 79 years at
There is now ample evidence to show that low cholesterol (TC) per se is linked to a range of adverse side-effects including an increase in the incidence of violent deaths and suicide. A meta-analysis found that observational studies (including cohort, case–control, and cross-sectional studies) consistently showed increased violent death and violent behaviours in persons with
The justification for the prescription of statins is that they lower the level of cholesterol in the blood(TC). As a consequence it is argued there will be a reduction in the risk of developing heart disease. However as I have demonstrated in previous blogs (BLOGS 8 and 14)this argument does not stand up to