The statin controversy

A friend asked me recently about statins.  He takes a statin for primary prevention, but is concerned that he has muscle pain and weakness as a side effect.  So he posed the question: “How important is the statin?” The Washington Post had this recent article – Who should take statins? A vicious debate over cholesterol drugs. But while nearly all experts agree that statins are beneficial for people at a substantial risk for heart disease, some medical researchers argue that statins do little or no good — and possible harm — for people at lower risk of heart disease. The conflict has burst into public view in the United Kingdom — and is likely heading here, too. A bruising battle has played out for several years between Britain’s two leading medical research journals, the Lancet and the British Medical Journal (BMJ), which have accused each other of endangering public health. The debate has gotten so heated that it has made tabloid headlines (“STATIN WAR,” blasted the Daily Mail). It began when BMJ first questioned statins’ usefulness in 2014, publishing two articles that argued that the drug was being overprescribed to people with low risk of heart disease. It also claimed that the side effects from the drugs were worse than previously thought. Statins have two major effects.  First, they lower cholesterol levels.  Lowering cholesterol likely decreases plaque size, therefore patients will less likely have atherosclerotic complications.  Se...
Source: DB's Medical Rants - Category: Internal Medicine Authors: Tags: Medical Rants Source Type: blogs