Statins Even people not at risk of suffering a heart attack can benefit from the drugs, adding to a growing body of evidence that their use could be extended to millions of additional patients.
Previous studies have suggested that the drugs can substantially reduce the risk of a heart attack even in people with no obvious sign of illness.
The researchers believe that the drugs should now be given to people who do not have signs of heart disease but who do have other risk factors such as family history, high blood pressure and diabetes.
The review of 10 trials, involving more than 70,000 patients, found that statins cut the number of deaths from all causes by 12 per cent in patients without heart disease, according to the findings published online by the British Medical Journal.
The researchers, from the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, say that it is not possible from the data to say who would benefit most, but suggest it would be men over 65 years with risk factors, or older women with diabetes and risk factors.
Cathy Ross, Senior Cardiac Nurse at the British Heart Foundation (BHF), said: "It is well established that most people with heart and circulatory disease benefit from taking statins.
They can also kill you in rare cases: NHS: STATIN INTOLERANT by Mois: Read the comment from Dr. Liz Miller a GP.
Both sides of the argument need to be looked at.
Angus
Angus Dei on all and sundry
NHS Behind the headlines
Angus Dei politico
1 comment:
Cholesterol again ! Just when I thought we'd laid that one to rest another bloody study comes up seemingly to support the the hypothesis (yes it is) that cholesterol is the cause of heart disease and probably all the ills of mankind.
So let's statinate everyone even the very healthy when the evidence is in fact virtually non existent to support it. Yes there is evidence that statistically, if you have survived a cardiac event, statins do lower your risk of a further event by a small percentage. But, in all other cases there is little to advocate thier use. They weaken heart and other muscle, deprive you of CoQ10, lower cholesterol, cause amnesia, and will no doubt bring life as we know it to an end.
Linking the concept to reality, of all people who expire from a cardiac event most did not have high levels of cholesterol at all and it is now a fact that high levels of both of the lipoproteins that carry cholesterol in the blood; HDL and LDL, are beneficial especially in people over 47 years. Cholesterol is one of the essentials of life, most being manufactured in the liver, and it seems highly unlikely that this should occur in the abundance that it does if it is toxic to humanity.
It is a fact that the Japanese who had the highest incidence of CHD in the world after the war, have now become the one of lowest and longest lived societies in the world. How ? by increasing thier intake of fats and proteins as a deliberate societal change.
Cholesterol is not the ogre and taking statins to effect lowering is pointless at best and at worst dangerous and yields huge profits for the companies that make and promote them and, as you can buy them over the counter at Boots now, we are going to hear of pregnancies that will go terribly wrong because some idiot takes them without reading the up side effects.
Read the the book 'the great cholesterol con', go to 'thincs' on google and I leave with a great quote from T.H. Huxley. 'The tragedy of science is the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact'.
Post a Comment