Statins offer more benefits than side effects, say scientists
Just a few months ago, researchers estimated that around 200,000 people in the UK alone may have been prompted to stop taking statin pills within a six-month period due to a public controversy that started in 2013 regarding the drug’s effectiveness. A study funded by the British Heart Foundation also said that an extra 2,000 heart attacks or strokes may be seen in the following decade as a consequence.
But recently, a major review of research showed that the benefits of the cholesterol-fighting drug have been underestimated and its harms exaggerated. According to the scientists, previous reports regarding the drug’s high levels of side effects were misleading. These claims have a “serious cost to public health” and can dissuade people from taking beneficial medicines, they said.
Rory Collins, a professor at the Clinical Trial Service Unit at Britain’s Oxford University, said their review showed that the numbers of people who avoid strokes and heart attacks by taking statin therapy are more significant than those who experience side effects.
He also emphasized that the effects of a heart attack or stroke “are irreversible and can be devastating”, while the side effects which may include nausea, muscle pain and liver problems could be reversed by simply stopping the statin.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), cardiovascular diseases like heart attacks and strokes are the world’s number one killers, accounting for an estimated 31% of all deaths and claiming 17.5 million lives worldwide.
Statins were once among the biggest revenue generators for drugmakers like AstraZeneca and Pfizer, but most of them are now off-patent and available as cheap generics.
The US health guidelines recommend that high-risk patients receive aggressive statin therapy. In the UK, around seven million people take statins and health authorities said it should be prescribed more widely as preventatives.
Doubts regarding statins began in 2013 when the British Medical Journal (BMJ) published papers by Harvard Medical School’s John Abramson and UK cardiologist Aseem Malhotra claiming that up to 20% of users get side effects. The figure was later retracted after the BMJ said it was based on flawed data.
In the recent review, Collins’ team found that periods of intense public discussion about statins were followed by rises in the proportion of people who stop taking the drugs, and by falls in the number of prescriptions for them.
Studies in Denmark, Australia, Turkey and France as well as in the UK have all suggested that media debate about side effects of statins has led to measurable effects on their use.
David Webb, president of the British Pharmacological Society, said he feared many patients who should take statins had been persuaded against them by exaggerated claims of harm. “It is likely that many lives have been lost based on a received view that statins are dangerous and ineffective,” he said.
The review found that lowering cholesterol by 2 millimoles per liter with a statin, such as a daily 40mg tablet of atorvastatin for five years in 10,000 patients would prevent major cardiovascular events in 1,500 people and cause problematic side effects in around 200.
Category: Features, Pharmaceuticals
