Statin drugs are among the best-selling drugs of all time, and have made tens of billions of dollars for Big Pharma.
And they're useless junk.
No Longevity Benefit
Typically, clinical drug trials examining mortality outcomes simply report the absolute number of deaths in the intervention and control groups. Recently, Danish researchers decided to do something a little different: they conducted the first study ever to systematically evaluate statin trials using average postponement of death as the primary outcome.
They searched the literature and found 6 primary prevention statin trials and 5 for secondary prevention with a follow-up between 2.0 and 6.1 years.
The median postponement of death for primary and secondary prevention trials were 3.2 and 4.1 days, respectively.
The highest value they found was 27 days in the 4S study, achieved by 5.8 years of simvastatin therapy in participants with a history of unstable angina or myocardial infarction.
As the researchers concluded, "Statin treatment results in a surprisingly small average gain in overall survival within the trials’ running time."[1]
And that was being generous.
When the NNT (Number Needed to Treat) Group examined the effect of statins for people who'd never had a heart attack or stroke (most of the people who currently take statins), they found the following outcomes after 5 years:
None were helped (life saved)
1 in 104 were helped (preventing heart attack)
1 in 154 were helped (preventing stroke)
1 in 100 were harmed (develop diabetes)
1 in 10 were harmed (muscle damage)
The NNT report observed that statins did indeed lower cholesterol in most people who took them, but "very few people will avoid a heart attack or stroke by virtue of this change ... Most disappointing, statins seem unable to prevent death in this group. And most concerning, the drugs may increase diabetes, a serious and life-altering disease."[2]
Major Pro-Statin "Collaboration" Received Hundreds of Millions of Dollars from Drug Companies
The Cholesterol Treatment Trialists Collaboration (CTT) has released a number of papers over the years claiming benefits for statin drugs. It was later revealed the CTT was receiving lavish funding from drug companies; Merck, one of the biggest manufacturers of statins, had donated £217 million.
When researchers not on the Big Pharma payroll reanalyzed the CTT data for a major Cochrane Collaboration meta-analysis, they found "statin therapy prevents one serious cardiovascular event per 140 low risk people … treated for five years. Statin therapy in low risk people does not reduce all cause mortality or serious illness and has about an 18 percent risk of causing side effects that range from minor and reversible to serious and irreversible"[3]
When researchers from Cambridge University reviewed 11 statin studies involving more than 65,000 people, similar numbers from both groups died during an average period of 3.7 years. There was also no correlation between on-treatment difference in LDL-C levels and relative reduction in all-cause mortality[4].
Researchers from Ireland came to a similar conclusion when they re-analyzed fifty-five published statin studies spanning up to 12 years. Instead of seeing benefits, they found "a categorical lack of clinical evidence to support the use of statin therapy in primary prevention. Not only is there a dearth of evidence for primary cardiovascular protection, there is ample evidence to show that statins actually augment cardiovascular risk in women, patients with Diabetes Mellitus and in the young. Furthermore statins are associated with triple the risk of coronary artery and aortic artery calcification."[5]
Statistical Deception
Researchers David Diamond and Dr Uffe Ravnskov closely examined the data from three controversial statin trials: JUPITER, ASCOT-LLA, and the British Heart Protection Study. They concluded "the presentation of statin trial findings can be characterized as a deceptive strategy in which negligible benefits of statin treatment have been amplified with the use of relative risk statistics, and that serious adverse effects are either ignored or explained away as a chance occurrences."
Moreover, while citing relative risk figures for the alleged benefits of statins, the authors of these studies presented adverse event rates in terms of absolute risk. As relative risk always provide a larger percentage figure than absolute risk for the exact same data, this is a patently misleading strategy[6].
Michel de Lorgeril is the head researcher of the most successful CVD dietary intervention trial ever conducted: The Lyon Diet Heart Study. He is also an outspoken critic of the dubious research and reporting practices that surround statin RCTs.
In 2010, de Lorgeril and colleague Patricia Salen made a very interesting observation. Namely, most cholesterol-lowering drug trials published between 2005 (the year of the Vioxx affair and of enforcement of new clinical trial regulations) and 2009 were negative or ambiguous. The notable exception was the exceedingly odiferous JUPITER study, which was halted early before the menacingly narrowing endpoint trajectories of the intervention and control groups met or crossed over.
In contrast, prior to the the more stringent trial regulations of 2005 there was a regular stream of positive statin trials appearing in the published medical literature. These positive trials with statins — particularly in the secondary prevention of coronary heart disease — published between 1994 and 2004 were used to issue pro-statin guidelines for medical practitioners.
As de Lorgeril and Salen concluded, the data from these early trials "should be carefully re-examined by experts independent from the pharmaceutical industry."[7]
In my opinion, de Lorgeril and Salen were being exceptionally nice. A far more blunt appraisal of the blatant discrepancy between the pre- and post-2005 statin trials is that it strongly appears the former were statistically manipulated and misleadingly reported in order to support the commercial agenda of their manufacturers.
Statins: They still suck.
Anthony Colpo is an independent researcher, physical conditioning specialist, and author of the groundbreaking books The Fat Loss Bible
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References
- Kristensen ML, et al. The effect of statins on average survival in randomised trials, an analysis of end point postponement. BMJ Open, 2015; 5: e007118. Available online: http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/9/e007118.full?cited-by=yesl5/9/e007118
- Newman D. Statin Drugs Given for 5 Years for Heart Disease Prevention (Without Known Heart Disease). thennt.com. Available online: http://www.thennt.com/nnt/statins-for-heart-disease-prevention-without-prior-heart-disease/
- Abramson JD. Should people at low risk of cardiovascular disease take a statin? BMJ, 2013; 347: f6123. Available online:
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/heartofthematter/download/StatinsshouldNOTbebroadedtowiderpopulation.pdf - Ray KK, et al. Statins and All-Cause Mortality in High-Risk Primary PreventionA Meta-analysis of 11 Randomized Controlled Trials Involving 65 229 Participants. Archives of Internal Medicine, 2010; 170: 1024–1031. Available online: http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=416105
- Sultan S, Hynes N. The Ugly Side of Statins. Systemic Appraisal of the Contemporary Un-Known Unknowns. Open Journal of Endocrine and Metabolic Diseases, 2013; 3: 179-185. Available online: http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=34065
- Diamond D, Ravnskov U. How statistical deception created the appearance that statins are safe and effective in primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease. Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology, 2015; 8: 201-210. Available online: http://psychology.usf.edu/News/ExpertRevClinPharmacol2015StatisticalDeceptionInStatinResearch.pdf
- de Lorgeril M, Salen P. RECENT CHOLESTEROL-LOWERING DRUG TRIALS: NEW DATA, NEW QUESTIONS. Journal of Lipid Nutrition, 2010; 19 (1). Available online: https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jln/19/1/19_1_65/_pdf