Sunday 20 May 2012

Breaking News! Statins are safe again!


Heart attack
Up to recently, a majority of studies had  shown no obvious gain  in administering statins to patients who had not experienced a previous cardiac event or were at an elevated risk of cardiac pathology.  These studies had not been widely publicised by the pharmaceutical industry for obvious reasons. 

A preview of the results of a meta-analysis of 27 large studies (175,000 subjects in total) to be published in the Lancet in late 2013 suggests otherwise. According to authors quoted from the University of Oxford, anyone over the age of 50 would benefit from statin therapy. The authors insist that the extra cost of therapy would be outweighed by the savings made by a reduction in cardiac events and subsequent hospitalisation and rehabilitation costs.

The link to the full article is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18091708



1 comment:

  1. A previous article, also released by the BBC, in 2011 quotes the results of a meta-analysis by the Cochrane Institute, whereby no advantage was found in administering statins to healthy individuals.

    The link to that is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12224312

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