Re: Statins: benefit confined to high risk

From: George Conklin (georgeconklin1_at_earthlink.net)
Date: 10/05/04 

Date: Tue, 05 Oct 2004 13:26:51 GMT

"fresh~horses" <fresh~horses@despammed.com> wrote in message
news:abf8de5b.0410042046.523ff9f9@posting.google.com...
> "The benefit is really confined to people at high risk. We have no
> trials on the effect of giving them to low-risk groups."
>
> Professor Tom Saunders, Kings College London on statins.
>
> * No evidence for statin benefit to women w/o heart disease
> * Lowering cholesterol of elderly increases risk of cancers
>
>
> http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=568865&host=3&dir=59
>
> A cry from the heart
>
> Cholesterol-busting statins were hailed as modern wonder drugs. Now
> some doctors are not so sure, reports Jerome Burne
>
> 05 October 2004
>
> Last week, a number of senior medical figures went public with
> detailed concerns that the widely accepted benefits of statins are
> exaggerated.
>
> Their worries were set out in an open letter to the American National
> Institutes of Health and the National Cholesterol Education Program
> that called for a radical rethink of the guidelines for statin use.
> Signed by more than 30 researchers and clinicians from prestigious
> universities and medical centres including Harvard, Cornell and Johns
> Hopkins, it makes two startling claims: that there is no evidence for
> statins benefiting women who have not had a heart attack, and that
> lowering the cholesterol levels of elderly patients increases the risk
> of their getting other diseases such as cancer.
>
> Similar concerns about the value and safety of statins have been
> raised before, but always by individual researchers. One such critic
> is Professor Tom Saunders, a nutritionist at King's College London who
> opposed Dr Reckless's statins-in-the-water idea. He claims that the
> drugs have "significant" side effects, and casts doubt on their value
> for patients who have not suffered a heart attack. "The benefit is
> really confined to people at high risk," he says. "We have no trials
> on the effect of giving them to low-risk groups."
>
> Another critic has been Dr John Abramson of Harvard Medical School,
> who was quoted in the BMJ last week opposing a plan to allow statins
> to be sold over the counter in the US. "In primary prevention [ie
> people without heart disease], statin therapy does not significantly
> reduce mortality or the overall risk of serious illness," he said.
>
> The NIH letter is a significant step, as it represents the first time
> that opponents of statin therapy have joined forces. "It takes a lot
> of guts for mainstream academics to put their head over the parapet on
> this one," says one of the two UK signatories, the Cheshire GP Malcolm
> Kendrick, who has long been publicly sceptical about the value of
> cholesterol as a useful marker for heart disease.
>
> The letter was in response to the National Heart, Lung and Blood
> Institute's 2001 cholesterol education programme, which recommended
> that statins be prescribed for women at moderately high risk of heart
> disease, on the grounds that six studies had shown that the drugs
> would reduce their risk of having a heart attack. The NIH letter
> asserts: "Not one of the six studies provides significance evidence to
> support this claim. The guidelines admit that studies supporting this
> recommendation 'generally are lacking' (meaning they don't exist)."
> The letter also claims that in one study, looking at women with
> several risk factors but no history of heart disease, the risk of
> heart attack among those treated with statins actually increased by 10
> per cent.
>
>
> -------more------

  It once again shows how political medical advice is. Science? As the
article states, there are NO scientific studies to back widespread use of
statins in most populations. And early studies also showed that for the
elderly low cholesterol correlates with increased risk of cancer. Too much
medical care = bad life expectancy.

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