New article this week:

http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/...-nerve-disease

Long term study shows double incidence of PD in statin users.
(and also discusses other toxicities with them as well).

In addition:
http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/...726.1424023504

I expect the mobilization of major public relations effort on the part of the big Stain makers (Pfizer--Lipitor; Astra Zenica-Crestor; Merck--simvastatin) to deflect the information about these dire adverse effects of statins. The costs of these public relations efforts could be put into discovering how to fix the disastrous effects of statins. That will not happen. the companies would have to admit damage. Instead I expect to be bombarded with useless, false studies over the next 4 to 5 yrs followed by the pharmaceutical companies completely dropping the subject of statins all together. As though they never existed and were prescribed for multimillions. Anyone remember hormone replacement therapy?
Beware the "life style" drugs being foisted upon all of us.

I wonder how long this info will take to trickle down the the MDs...

It won't be long now. Once the sales reps stop, and the papers dry up... the real info will hit NYTimes etc, and they will learn that way. On PN we see some people now coming in whose doctors have discontinued the statins... 5 yrs ago that was zero, but now some are showing up here at times. Perhaps the litigations will start, and commericals already exist for Lipitor and diabetes from attorneys on TV.

Perhaps there will be no need for a public relations push. There has been NO media coverage in the US and the coverage in the UK of the study lasted but 2 days. There was more than adequate coverage of the now questionable studies purporting to show positive effects of statins upon PD. WTH?
Further strengthens my belief that the pharmaceutical industry needs to be nationalized.

Adding a bit to what mrsD has contributed to this and other threads concerning statins and this is just my two cents worth.

I think that many of the clinical trials which led to regulatory approval for statins were what are called "surrogate outcome" trials. That means that people who got a statin had lower blood cholesterol levels than people who got a placebo. That is not a surprise given the pharmacology of statins but surrogate outcome trials are often very misleading in terms of therapeutic benefit.

The contrast is with what are called "real life outcome" clinical trials. In this context they seek to answer two related questions: (1) If I get a statin is my risk of a heart attack or stroke lower than somebody who gets a placebo? and (2) Are there any adverse health risks for people who get a statin compared to a placebo?

Real life outcome clinical trials are expensive and take longer than surrogate outcome clinical trials, which may be why pharmaceutical companies avoid them.

As far as I can see the answer to the first question above is, in general, "No" and the answer to the second question is "Yes, there are many potential adverse health outcomes.".

Kiwi... there is a book called the Cholesterol Myths by Ravnskov

http://www.ravnskov.nu/cholesterol.htm

In it he explains how Dr. Keyes, who was one of the first researchers into cholesterol lowering, threw out data that did not fit his graphs.
I read this book many years ago, and even loaned it to my doctor who never returned it to me. It did not stop her however from nagging me every visit to take a statin when my total cholesterol is about 250 and my HDLs are very high. (I refuse statins every time.)

Olsen here, has put up some wonderful posts on this subject...including the math. Here is one link about "needed to treat" numbers:
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/post1030592-4.html

The Ravnskov book is filled with math and study manipulation, Kiwi, and I think you will understand it much better than I did.

Should so many women be taking statins?

Medical guidelines issued late last year may double the number of Americans who are told to take these cholesterol-lowering drugs. But the recommendations don’t distinguish patients by gender, and a small, increasingly vocal group of cardiologists believe that’s a mistake.

Far too many healthy women are taking statins, they say, though some research indicates the drugs will do them little good and may be more likely to cause serious side effects in women...

...Although women represent slightly more than half of the population, they have been vastly underrepresented in clinical trials of statins. As a result, evidence on the benefits and risks for women is limited...

...Studies have found that healthy women who took statins to prevent cardiovascular disease did experience fewer episodes of chest pain and had fewer treatments like stents and bypass surgery. But statins didn’t prevent healthy women from having their first heart attacks and didn’t save lives.

The Jupiter trial, which included 6,801 women age 60 and older, found a significantly lower risk of so-called soft endpoints, like hospitalization for unstable angina, among healthy women taking statins.

But the absolute number of these health setbacks was small, and there was no significant reduction in heart attacks, strokes and deaths among these women. By contrast, male participants on statins had significantly fewer heart attacks and strokes.
... said Dr. Barbara Roberts... “Women who are healthy derive no benefit from statins, and even those women who have established heart disease derive only half the benefit men do.”

Dr. C. Noel Bairey Merz, director of the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles, disagreed. “We haven’t shown that we can prevent deaths, because we just haven’t enrolled enough women, and that’s a crime,” she said. “But the absence of data is not the same as negative data.”

In the meantime, she said, “we can either sit on our hands or use our best judgment to make an educated guess, and can decide to treat.” (Dr. Bairey Merz has had financial relationships with drug companies, including Abbott Vascular, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Gilead.)

... The drugs have long been known to cause muscle pain in some people and, more rarely, liver and kidney damage, as well as cognitive side effects like memory loss and confusion.

In 2010, Johns Hopkins researchers discovered that statins could, in rare instances, make the body produce antibodies against its own proteins, engendering a painful and debilitating muscle disease that actually gets worse when patients stop taking the drugs. But the most common side effect is diabetes.

In 2012, researchers published a study showing that postmenopausal women who took part in the Women’s Health Initiative were much more likely to develop diabetes if they took statins, and diabetes itself increases the risk of heart disease considerably.

Despite the concerns, women are heavy users of statins, especially in midlife ...

...Even critics of statin use in healthy women say they would not hesitate to prescribe the drugs to patients with established heart disease. But since cholesterol readings are increasingly used as quality indicators to rate physicians and health plans, many younger adult women may feel pressured to take the medicine even though they are in good health, some doctors say.


To some extent, the differences represent different philosophies.

Although the new treatment guidelines recommend lifestyle changes for lowering cholesterol, Dr. Bairey Merz said: “I think they should probably go out the window. We have yet to find any kind of lifestyle change intervention that actually helps people live longer.”...

...But Dr. Roberts advises women that they can reduce their heart risk by watching their weight, exercising and following a diet rich in fish, fruits and vegetables, nuts and olive oil — and, if they’ve never had heart trouble, forgetting statins.

“We know you can get the benefit and relative risk reduction from adhering to a Mediterranean-style diet,” she said.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/well...=ZAQHM3wJU#_=_

Thanks mrsD - I will definitely check out the Ravnskov book.