The Statin Wars. This is Going to be Fun.
A JAMA Internal Medicine study just came out and said:
The link between statin-induced LDL lowering and reduction of CV outcomes may not be as robust as assumed, researchers who conducted a meta-analysis published in JAMA Internal Medicine concluded.
and:
“We believe that absolute risk reduction is essential for clinical decision-making and provides the clinician with a more accurate means of discussing the true benefits and harms of a specific therapy with their patients. Framed this way, our analysis found that when considering the absolute risk reduction of statins, the benefits are quite modest, and most trial participants who took statins derived no clinical benefit,” Byrne and colleagues wrote.
I am not here to debate this. That is not my point. What I am getting the popcorn ready for is the attacks coming against the researchers. There is a lot of money in statins. There is always a lot of dogma that statins save billions of lives. We are taught this in medical school. But what if the research was bullshit? Not possible? Think of all the mistakes we made with COVID and all the doctors who got in trouble for speaking out. What, you don’t remember these?
- It has surface transmission
- Natural immunity doesn’t count
- There are NO treatments other than vaccine
- Cloth masks work
- There was no way there could have been a lab leak
- Hundreds of thousands of kids have died
- And so much more
I am not here to debate CV19. I am way past that. What I am preparing you for is the media’s response to this study, which will be paid for by Big Pharma. Let the attack dogs out.
You heard it here first.
One of the long list of reasons I left primary care was that I was not ever willing to take statins, even though I was medico-legally on the hook for recommending them to patients. Very hard not to commit hypocrisy instead of Hippocracy in this biz. Pass the ribs!
I am a believer in statins for primary prevention but I admit the effect is slight.. That the statins effect is separate from lipid lowering has been suggested for a long time, and I’m skeptical of highly aggressive (read: expensive) LDL treatment. Given how expensive PCSK9 inhibitors are I think we will see a push for their use in additional indications.
Whenever a beloved, but now older drug class starts getting trashed in the journals, it means several things:
The drug is now generic, so there is no huge campaign to stop publishing the negative analysis.
There is a new drug class to be released, within a matter of months, which will be shown to be effective, “safer” (because all new drugs always look safer) and infinitely more expensive.
There is a new drug in the same class, soon to be released, which will come with manipulated data to make it look more effective than the older drugs. Unfortunately, it, too, will be expensive.
Take two aspirins and call me in the morning. Studies have not shown a robust benefit. I’m hanging up now.
Whatever happened to the suggestion that mortality will improve for everybody over 75 if they’re put on a statin whether or not they have high cholesterol? Now that nearly all statins are generic it’s hard to imagine any Big Pharma profits from putting us seniors on statins. Personally, I take bergamot, resveratrol, psyllium, and, now that I don’t have to be around patients, garlic capsules, and my cholesterol is just fine, thanks! Everybody seems to be dying of pancreatic cancer, anyway!
Thank you for highlighting this study and for pointing out many years ago in one of your posts the number needed to treat: 45 patients had to take a statin daily for five years to possibly prevent one cardiac event if my memory is correct. This latest study may not cause all the controversy you suggest it will because all the statins have gone generic. Big Pharma no longer cares as they already cashed in and have moved on.