Its official, statins do not have any side effects. Some of you will have noted that researchers have now decided that statins do not have any side effects at all. To be pedantic, the correct term is not side effects, it is drug related adverse events. A side effect can be positive, or negative. In order to prove that statins cause no adverse events, a paper was published in the Lancet entitled Adverse events associated with unblinded, but not with blinded, statin therapy in the Anglo Scandinavian Cardiac Outcomes TrialLipid Lowering Arm ASCOT LLA a randomised double blind placebo controlled trial and its non randomised non blind extension phase. A virtually impenetrable title which could mean almost anything. But the key message can be found here These analyses illustrate the so called nocebo effect, with an excess rate of muscle related AE reports only when patients and their doctors were aware that statin therapy was being used and not when its use was blinded. These results will help assure both physicians and patients that most AEs associated with statins are not causally related to use of the drug and should help counter the adverse effect on public health of exaggerated claims about statin related side effects. Funding Pfizer, Servier Research Group, and Leo Laboratories. Wish List Sylvia Day Epub' title='Wish List Sylvia Day Epub' />Wish List Sylvia Day EpubStatement by authors in original ASCOT study The Lancet vol 3. April 5th 2. 00. 3. Pp. 11. 49 1. 15. The Anglo Scandinavian Outcomes Trial ASCOT is an independent, investigator initiated and investigator led multicentre, randomised trial designed to compare two antihypertensive treatment strategies for the prevention of CHD eventsFunding of the original ASCOT study Pfizer, Servier Research Group and Leo Laboratories. The worlds leading online source of ebooks, with a vast range of ebooks from academic, popular and professional publishers. The ASCOT study was published over fifteen years ago. There was a lot of noise about this study on the radio, newspaper and television. At least there was in the UK. Professor Peter Sever, one of the authors, and a key investigator, stated on the radio, that the inserts warning of drug related adverse effects should be removed from the packaging, as they simply encourage patients to believe that they are suffering from adverse effects. He also stated that statins caused muscle problems in less than one in ten thousand patients. I tend to disagree with him. I was asked to be interviewed on various radio stations, including BBC radio Scotland, and to write a newspaper article for the Scotsman newspaper. Introduction To EMicro Forex Futures Investopedia www. While there is no central marketplace for. I have spent all day looking for a compression solution to all my data. I have TBs of mixed data. Mp4s. Jpegs, Mp3s, Pdf, Epub, Doc etc. Too many to list. Wish List Sylvia Day Epub' title='Wish List Sylvia Day Epub' />Wish List Sylvia Day EpubIt went as follows The Great Statin Con. Yesterday, I was asked to appear on various programmes to discuss a study proving that statins cause no side effects at all. Or, at most, they may cause muscle pains in around one in ten thousand people, no more. At the same time, statins save thousands of lives a year. Therefore, everyone should take them, and patients should ignore scaremongering doctors such as me I suppose who state that side effects are common, and potentially serious. On the radio, Professor Peter Sever, the lead author of the study, suggested that the leaflets warning of side effects should be removed, because once a patient reads that there may be side effects, they will be far more likely to suffer from them, and report them. The so called nocebo effect. The opposite of the placebo effect, whereby people taking medicines think they will get better, or that their pain will be reduced. There is no doubt that the nocebo effect is real, although the placebo effect is also real, so do these two effects not just cancel each other outThis is a difficult area of medicine, disentangling what is real, from what is imagined. However, I watched my father in law become unable to walk, whilst taking statins. We were pushing him around in a wheelchair until, eventually, he agreed to stop his statins. At which point he became able to walk a good distance again, and even climb stairs again. A nocebo effect All in the mind No, of course not. I had a patient with such severe abdominal pains that she was going to undergo an investigative laparotomy to establish what was causing them. No investigations had revealed anything. I suggested she stop the statins and the pains were completely gone in two days. All in the mind I have spoken to many other GPs who have reported seeing side effects in many patients. I suppose if you are trying to push statins as hard as possible, and you built your academic reputation on running trials on statins, you will naturally want to push them as hard as possible. Some experts have even suggested putting statins in the water supply. But this latest report pushes things to a completely ridiculous point. Can I, as a GP, simply tell patients reporting side effect that you do not have a side effect, they do not exist, it is simply in your mind. No, this would be completely ridiculous, and a total denial of your job, which is to listen to what patients tell you. Not to take a horribly, I know best, paternalistic position. On the other hand, the benefits of statins have been hyped to an almost completely ridiculous degree. We are told that they reduce the risk of having a heart attack by 3. The reality is, that unless you have had a previous heart attack, statins have no effect on overall mortality. To put that another way, they dont save lives. They dont even prevent heart attacks or strokes in women with no previous history of heart disease. The statistic you really want to know about statins is the following. If you have had a heart attack, or stroke, and take a statin for five years, you will increase your life expectancy by 4. Newsweek Blogger Template on this page. Balance that against a twenty per cent chance of having side effects, some of which are very unpleasant and long lasting, and you can see why I am not a fan of statins. Ends. Currently I am sifting through the original ASCOT paper to find out exactly what they did study, and what they found, and suchlike. The problem with trying to get to grips with research like this is that there are figures, and more figures, and data and exclusion criteria, and things that are not fully explained. So, it is difficult to make any statement about this entire saga, without many hours of detailed research. However, I can certainly comment on the key finding from the recent Lancet nocebo paper. Key or not, it is the finding that they made the most noise about. During the non blinded non randomised phase, muscle related AEs adverse events were reported at a significantly higher rate by participants taking statins than by those who were not 1. To translate 1. 61 people out of more than six thousand complained of muscle pain whilst taking the statin, and 1. In total 3. 7 more people complained of muscle pain on the statin. This is not, what I would call, a lot. It was an absolute increase, in the risk of reporting adverse effects, of 0. Compare and contrast this figure with the findings of the Statin USAGE study. As far as I know, this was the largest study to look at why people take, then stop taking, statins The USAGE survey Understanding Statin use in Ama and Gaps in Education is the largest known cholesterol survey conducted in the U. S., involving more than 1. The USAGE survey explores patient perceptions, attitudes, behaviors and concerns about statins, the most commonly prescribed medications to treat high cholesterol. Pagesabout survey respondents. A number of things were found. The most important of which, is just how many people stopped taking their statins after one year. A pretty staggering 7.