Statin benefits

How many patients have been enrolled in statin studies?  At this point over 120,000 patients have participated in prospective, randomized, controlled, double-blinded trials specifically looking at the statin class of medications.  And in every one of these studies the side effects of both the statin and the placebo have been documented with the precision of a Swiss watchmaker with obsessive-compulsive disorder.  Every ache and pain, each rise and fall of dozens of lab markers, and all doctor and hospital visits are painstakingly recorded, tracked, and dissected using a mind numbing array of statistical analyses.

Modern medical science has never (and may never again) so thoroughly dissected the effect—and possible adverse effects—of a class of medication as has been the case with statins.  Here’s what the research teaches us:

• If you’ve had a heart attack already, or have coronary artery disease, you are at relatively high risk for heart attack, stroke and death.  Those with diabetes or atherosclerosis elsewhere in their circulation (carotid or peripheral) are at similarly high risk.  This group of patients has at least a 20% risk of death or severe cardiac problem over the course of 10 years.  A general rule holds true about risk and therapy: the higher your risk, the greater the magnitude of benefit you get from a therapy.
• If you average all the studies you will find that you can reduce the risk of cardiac-related death by about 20% among individuals at higher risk.
• Statins reduce the risk of stroke by about 20-30%.
• Statins are known to raise liver enzymes in a dose-dependent fashion in around 5 percent of people
• Statins very rarely lead to dangerous muscle damage (myopathy).
• Side effects were reported only slightly more commonly in patients randomized to receive the statin drugs (when compared to those on placebo), but the rate of drug discontinuance was similar between both groups.

This last finding is critical.  It means that regardless what you may hear from neighbors and family about the dangerous side effects of statins, the truth of the matter is that among the 120,000 patients studied the side effects of the statins were no different than those of the placebo pill.  Sure, muscle aches occurred, but they were no more prominent among patients randomized to receive the statin.

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