Word: statin
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...cholesterol numbers are drawn from an advertisement for the statin Zocor - a drug that the authors are careful not to dismiss out of hand, since it can indeed save lives, just not as many as its makers would like you to believe. The ad openly touts the 42% figure, which is based on a study in which 111 out of 2,221 people with heart disease who used Zocor later died of a heart attack. In a control group of heart patients who used a placebo, 189 out of 2,223 died. So the fact is there were indeed...
...similar analysis by Daniel Hall, an Episcopal priest and a surgeon at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, found that church attendance accounts for two to three additional years of life. To be sure, he also found that exercise accounts for three to five extra years and statin therapy for 2.5 to 3.5. Still, joining a flock and living longer do appear to be linked. (Read "The Year in Medicine 2008: From...
While the bulk of prevented deaths in statin-takers were attributable to heart-related factors, the authors note that mortality from other illnesses, such as cancer, also declined. That leads the authors to hypothesize that statins may benefit the body in many different ways. "The benefit cannot be explained by a reduction in cardiac death alone," said the study's lead author, Dr. Anthony Heymann, in an email. "It must mean that there are a large number of additional factors involved in preventing death that are influenced by taking statin medication...
...Ridker said that there was a small increase in diabetes for patients given the statin in the study. But, he said, “almost all” of the diabetes occurred among patients with “impaired fasting glucose,” or those who were “already heading toward diabetes...
...study suggests that screening all patients for CRP (a $10 test) as well as for cholesterol and blood pressure would not be unwise, or perhaps the test should be used for patients with indeterminate heart-disease risk, who may derive benefit from taking a statin. Longer-term trials are still needed, however, to show whether the benefits of statins outweigh their potential side effects - the drugs are relatively benign, but they are known in rare cases to cause debilitating side effects such as muscle weakness (which forced Bayer to pull its version off the market in 2001). There...