A new report published in the Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology concluded that statin advocates used a statistical tool called relative risk reduction (RRR) to amplify statins’ trivial beneficial effects.1The directors of clinical trials, according to the report, have also succeeded in minimizing the significance of a large number of adverse effects of statin treatment.So how are statistics being used to deceive you about statins’ effectiveness? If you look at absolute risk, statin drugs benefit just 1 percent of the population. This means that out of 100 people treated with the drugs, one person will have one less heart attack.This doesn’t sound so impressive… so statin supporters use a different statistic called relative risk. Just by making this statistical slight of hand, statins suddenly become beneficial for 30-50 percent of the population.As for side effects, the report notes that side effects are more common than the media and medical conferences report, and the modest benefits of the drugs do not even come close to outweighing the risks, which included increased rates of:
- Cancer
- Cataracts
- Diabetes
- Cognitive impairment
- Musculoskeletal disorders
The study authors noted:2“In the Jupiter trial, the public and healthcare workers were informed of a 54 percent reduction in heart attacks, when the actual effect in reduction of coronary events was less than 1 percentage point…
In the ASCOT-LLA study, which was terminated early because it was considered to have such outstanding results, there were heart attacks and deaths in 3% of the placebo (no treatment) group as compared to 1.9% in the Lipitor group.The improvement in outcome with Lipitor treatment was only 1.1 percentage point, but when this study was presented to the public, the advertisements used the inflated (relative risk) statistic, which transformed the 1.1% effect into a 36% reduction in heart attack risk.The inflated claims for statin effectiveness, and minimized portrayal of the adverse effects, has played a role in the health care providers and the public's enthusiasm for cholesterol-lowering drugs, say the authors.”
A Quick Brush-Up On Your Statistics May Make Your Mouth Drop Open
I want to highlight just how drastic a difference statistics can make, and how drug companies can legally deceive you by stating effectiveness in terms of relative risk.Absolute risk reduction is the decrease in risk of a treatment in relation to a control treatment. Relative risk reduction is calculated by dividing the absolute risk reduction by the control event rate.In plain English, here's what that means: let's say you have a study of 200 women, half of whom take a drug and half take a placebo, to examine the effect on breast cancer risk.After five years, two women in the drug group develop breast cancer, compared to four who took the placebo. This data could lead to either of the following headlines, and both would be correct:"New Miracle Drug Cuts Breast Cancer Risk by 50%!""New Drug Results in 2% Drop in Breast Cancer Risk!"How can this be? The Annie Appleseed Project explains:3"The headlines represent two different ways to express the same data. The first headline expresses the relative risk reduction — the two women who took the drug (subjects) and developed breast cancer equal half the number (50%) of the four women who took the placebo (controls) and developed breast cancer.The second headline expresses the absolute risk reduction — 2% of the subjects (2 out of 100) who took the drug developed breast cancer and 4% of the controls (4 out of 100) who took the placebo developed breast cancer — an absolute difference of 2% (4% minus 2%)."You can now see why clinical trials, especially those funded by drug companies, will cite relative risk reductions rather than absolute risk reductions, and as a patient you need to be aware that statistics can be easily manipulated. As STATS at George Mason University explained:4"An important feature of relative risk is that it tells you nothing about the actual risk."
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