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medpundit |
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Saturday, March 30, 2002Well, Reuters is indulging in hyperbole. The studies weren't all that impressive. Even the enthusiastic news reports can not make them look promising. In the pancreatic cancer study the subjects were mice. 10 out of 12 mice on a statin developed pancreatic cancer compared to 10 out of 10 mice not on a statin. It seems a stretch to come to such a dramatic conclusion based on those numbers. They need to invest in more mice. The osteoporosis study wasn't any better. They just looked at fracture rates in 1375 women in Australia. Of the 573 women with a history of fracture, 16 were on statins (2.8%). Of the 802 who didn't have a fracture, 53 took statins (6.6%). This isn't a large difference, and by no means is it solid proof that statins prevent fracture. The majority of the women in the study didn't use statins at all (557 in the fracture group, and 749 in the no-fracture group). A better study would be to compare the rate of fractures in 1375 statin users and 1375 non-users. Yet the authors make the dramatic claim that statins reduce the risk of fractures by 60%. You have to wonder if they had some sort of ulterior motive to give such a postive spin to their statistics. posted by Sydney on 3/30/2002 07:52:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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