Statins are a big question in cardiac care.
Kaiser Permanente proudly reported last week the increased adoption of their daily statin regimen, but is the increased use of statins positive or negative?
Kaiser Permanente "ALL" quality improvement protocol increased prescription of heart and stroke risk medication regimen by 40 percent in community health centers. (Medical News Today, June 11)
The medication regimen bundles two generic drugs - a cholesterol-lowering statin and a blood pressure-lowering drug in daily doses to patients with diabetes or heart disease.
In 2009, Kaiser Permanente released a study showing that their protocol lowers the chance of hospitalization for heart attack or stroke the following year by more than 60 percent.
Statin association with memory loss in question? (MedPage Today, June 8)
A study published online in JAMA Internal Medicine on June 8th reported that "both statin and nonstatin LLDs were strongly associated with acute memory loss 30 days following exposure."
Thus, either all LLDs cause acute memory loss regardless of drug class or the association is a result of detection bias rather than a causal association. (Brian L. Strom, MD and colleagues)
Statins found cost-effective for older patients? (MedPage Today, April 21)
A computer simulation model showed generic statin use to be cost-effective in people ages 75 and older, resulting in eight million additional statin users and preventing 105,000 incident MIs and 68,000 deaths over 10 years, assuming no treatment harm.
Yet the model also suggested that any, even modest, adverse effects attributable to statins would "tip the balance in the direction of harm," wrote cardiologist Michael W. Rich, MD, in an accompanying editorial.
Safety, efficacy of statins exaggerated? (Science Daily, February 20)
A review entitled "How statistical deception created the appearance that statins are safe and effective in primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease," published in the journal Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology, argues that statins have "failed to substantially improve cardiovascular outcomes."
They further state that the many studies touting the efficacy of statins have not only neglected to account for the numerous serious adverse side effects of the drugs, but supporters of statins have used what the authors refer to as 'statistical deception' to make inflated claims... (Science Daily)
Statins have also been linked to risk of type 2 diabetes. (HealthDay, March 4)
What do you think? Comment below.