Statins could benefit health of millions

[xchrom]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/may/17/statins-benefit-millions-heart-health


Statins could help reduce the risk of heart problems in the over-50s, according to a report in the Lancet. Photograph: Frank Baron for the Guardian

Millions of over-50s could safeguard their health by taking statins, according to a study that found the drugs benefit healthy people with no heart problems.

The findings could lead to a change in policy by the NHS, which currently restricts cholesterol-lowering statins to those who either have heart disease or have at least a 20% risk of suffering a "major vascular event", such as a non-fatal heart attack, stroke or surgery on damaged arteries, within the next decade.

But a big study of statins' effectiveness, published in the online version of the Lancet medical journal, challenges that policy and concludes that even for people with no record of heart problems, taking statins can reduce their risk by a fifth.

The international criteria for who should receive statins should be reviewed and extended, the authors say. As many as 20 million Britons could be offered them, which would add up to £240m to the NHS's annual drugs bill.

[Warren Stupidity]

1. The Nurses Study has found a link between statins and diabetes.

Hopefully the lancet article discussed this complication.

[gleannfia]

2. Statins are waaaaay overprescribed

I am a physician assistant in the VA. If we could take all of the people off of them that really don't need them or benefit little, such as people 80s+--the decrease in the pharmacy budget would be substantial. Most of these studies are done by investigators who are in bed with the pharmaceutical industry.
Statins are also hard on the liver and can cause terrible muscular pain.

[mitchtv]

6. they are pretty scary,dangerous drugs

I thought they would kill me before I stopped/refused to take them, They are also being linked to memory problems. I reccomend staying away from them if possible.

[bemildred]

3. Their methodology sort of reeks, IMHO.

One wonders, for example, how they restrospectively sorted subjects into five categories with "different five-year risk of a major vascular event", and what a "unit reduction" is.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

4. yep. And I want to see them compare good diet and exercise to the pill, not some damn placebo! nt

[azul]

5. Statins are a probably toxic rip-off.

Their profitable promotion could possibly have been avoided if these dietary studies on sugars had been done 20 years ago, and that would have saved billions a year from health care costs:

http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/whatsnew/article.cfm?id=2515

And, the FDA finally had to place warnings on the Memory Problems of statins this year.

You would have a slightly better chance of avoiding cardiovascular problems at the risk of being dumber by taking statins, if you consumed enough fructose to get health effects. We had to wait for a wild profit-taking slowdown for the food and pharma industries to allow enough studies to be published to figure out the basic problem.

At least the health care costs should come down in the future when better diets are implemented.

[Chemisse]

7. This ship sailed about 10 years ago.

That's about when statins were a miracle drug that pretty much everybody should be taken and shouldn't even require a prescription.

Since then, there has been a lot revealed about complications and side effects, and not much evidence that it can actually lengthen people's lives.