“This comprehensive review, by a broad group of leading global academics, of robust and unbiased evidence from randomised controlled trials and systematic reviews, confirms that statins are both effective and cost effective, and that the benefit rises with the level of pre-treatment risk”.
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The review is meant to help doctors, people with heart disease and the wider public make informed choices on the use of the drug.
“The review establishes that statins prevent large numbers of fatal or serious irreversible heart attacks and strokes with very little in the way of side-effects, Associate Professor Sullivan said”.
The review was led by Oxford University and concluded that the benefits of your cholesterol medication have been downplayed while the adverse side-effects have been overstated.
The “fear-mongering” around the use of statins must end, says the Heart Foundation, after a review of the cholesterol-lowering tablets found them to be safe and effective.
The cholesterol-reducing tablets, the most prescribed drugs in the United Kingdom, have been the subject of years of controversy and conflicting reports.
However, for those at high risk it’s never the case of choosing one or the other and statins are always prescribed to reduce the risk of someone dying from heart disease, he said.
On the downside, five in 10,000 would develop myopathy – a muscle disease.
The experts revealed that lowering cholesterol by 2 mmol/L with an effective low-priced statin therapy (e.g. atorvastatin 40mg daily) for five years in 10,000 patients would prevent major cardiovascular events (heart attacks, ischaemic strokes and coronary artery bypasses) in 1,000 people with pre-existing vascular disease (“secondary prevention”), and in 500 people who are at increased risk (eg, due to their age or having hypertension or diabetes), but have not yet had a vascular event (“primary prevention”).
Five to ten would have a haemorrhagic stroke, which causes bleeding on the brain, and about 50-100 would develop diabetes.
They point out that numerous studies suggesting heightened risks had design flaws.
Lancet editor Richard Horton compared the harm of statins misinformation to that of the notorious – now discredited – research paper that linked the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to autism.
The review found that side-effects can include muscle pain, diabetes or stroke, but suggestions that statins cause other conditions, such as memory loss, cataracts, kidney injury and liver disease, were not accurate.
A daily 40-milligram statin dose costs about £2 ($2.70, 2.6 euros) per month in Britain, where some two million people are prescribed statins for secondary prevention and four million for primary prevention. They said reducing bad cholesterol by 2 mmol/L would nearly halve a person’s risk of a major vascular event. “Our priority is to ensure that the benefits of medication outweigh the risks”, she said.
“Statins have been unfairly demonised”, Tim Chico, a cardiologist from the University of Sheffield, told the Science Media Centre.
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In addition he says most of the side-effects can be reversed with “no residual effects” by stopping the statins.
