Statins are not evil

One of the classes of drugs that all doctors are sure have saved many lives are the statins, used for lowering cholesterol. Drugs with names like lovastatin, pravastatin, Crestor and Lipitor have been shown to be effective treatment for patients with coronary disease, and have shown over many trials lasting many years a substantial benefit with reduction in death and heart attacks.

They initially had a hard time as there were deaths from liver disease and also muscle cramps. Blood tests shortly after starting treatment should pick up the liver problems and of course not all medications are able to be taken by everybody. But there also seems to be large scare campaigns all over the Internet against them so whereas patients may come in requesting a drug for osteoporosis or an antibiotic – all of which can also cause substantial side-effects I rarely get a patient requesting any of the statins.

Recently they seem to be going up in every-bodies estimation however – some recent research has suggested that they may reduce the incidence of vascular disease by 50% or so as long as patients take them regularly as prescribed. So in those who are likely to benefit from it – that is a substantial clinical effect. There have also been reports that it may reduce the incidence of cataracts, reduce osteoporosis and very interesting recent reports that patients already on statins that are admitted to Intensive Care with the H1N1 influenza appear to do much better than those that are not taking statins. However sometimes these studies can be difficult to interpret as there is evidence that people who take statins regularly are also more likely to do all the other “right things” meaning that some of these benefits might be from the “good patient” effect rather than specifically from the statin. Then there was a suggestion in the Lancet that discussed the possible link  between ( of all things )  our favourite “vitamin of the decade” Vitamin D and statins.

So statins have managed to get themselves thrown into the recently talked about areas of saving very sick peoples lives in ICU, and into the interesting area of  Vitamin D metabolism and Vitamin D receptors.

Hopefully some of these observations will be tested in randomised clinical trials but with increasing publicity it looks as if particularly over the coming months getting patients who really need them to take statins may not be quite such a hard sell.

Tagged as: Cancer, Coronary disease, Health, Medications, Statin, Vitamin D