MARIKA SBOROS: Doctors should prescribe statins to more elderly patients, study finds
But several local and international cardiologists say the recommendation is controversial and the study is flawed and based on too little data
Doctors should give statins — drugs that are often prescribed to lower cholesterol and help prevent heart attacks and strokes — to more people aged over 75, even if they have no symptoms of heart disease, say top UK and Australian cardiologists. This will save 8,000 lives annually, they say in a meta-analysis — a statistical analysis that combines the results of a number of scientific studies — in the medical journal The Lancet. Editors of 24 major cardiovascular journals worldwide agreed in a timed editorial in the Journal of the American Heart Association. They “sound the alarm that human lives are at stake”. The danger lies in “medical misinformation” about statins that “travels faster through social networks than truth”, they say, and “rogue” medical voices are “overhyping” statins risks. Statins were first launched in the late 1980s and are the world’s most prescribed and the pharmaceutical industry’s most profitable drugs ever. They lower low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or “bad...
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