Wednesday, November 25, 2009

LDL-cholesterol, statins and health

These guys aren’t really talking about reducing the risk for heart disease or early death; they’re discussing how to use extremely expensive medications that are not particularly benign to treat lab values. As I’ve written countless times, statins can quickly and effectively treat lab values, but there is little evidence they treat much else. So if you want to have lab values that are the envy of all your friends, statins are the way to go. But if you want to really reduce your risk for all-cause mortality, you might want to think twice before you sign up for a drug that will cost you (or your insurance company) $150-$250 per month, make your muscles ache, diminish your memory and cognition, and potentially croak your liver.

SOURCE
From the Food & Health Skeptic http://john-ray.blogspot.com/2009/11/mobile-cancer-scare-all-in-your-head.html

Apparently a 30% reduction in the number of people with high LDL-cholesterol in a study's subject groups produced effectively no change in the rate of coronary heart disease overall. Well, actually, a small but statistically insignificant increase.

Posted via email from Garth's posterous

No comments: