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medpundit |
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Saturday, July 12, 2003Welcome to the age of statins. If you aren’t taking a cholesterol-lowering drug yourself, chances are you know someone who is. And it’s not necessarily an overweight, out-of-shape sports fan in his 50s who ventures off the couch only in search of chips and beer. An estimated 12 million to 15 million American adults of every age and description—from Gen-Xers to their octogenarian grandparents—depend on America’s most popular prescription drugs to scour their bloodstreams of LDL cholesterol, the waxy goo that can block arteries and cause heart attacks and strokes. And, according to federal health guidelines, 21 million more Americans should be taking statins to help ward off cardiovascular disease. Statins have become so critical in the war against cholesterol that a leading statin researcher compares them to the ultimate miracle med. Says Dr. Rory Collins of Oxford University: “Statins are the new aspirin.” His bold words could be an understatement. Promising new research is underway to investigate statins as a treatment for a number of other disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, osteoporosis and even cancer. Forget for a minute that the claims in that last paragraph are all speculation and theory and not based on any solid clinical evidence, which the article admits in the very end, but concentrate instead on the claims that are being made for statins as the "new aspirin." First, taking a statin and lowering cholesterol to the guideline levels only lowers the risk for heart disease by 3 to 5 percentage points compared to non-users. Second, using statins is a very costly proposition. And not just in terms of side effects. 15 million people are taking the drugs now - at a cost of anywhere from $40 a month to $120 a month. Add to that the cost of blood tests every six months, to monitor their effectiveness and to check for side effects. At one lab in my area, the cost of the lipid panel alone is $105. If we split the difference and say that the average price of statins is $90 a month, that's $1,080 a year for drugs and $210 a year for labs. Multiply that by 15 million users and you get $19.35 billion dollars each year devoted to statin therapy alone. And here's the real kicker. Although taking statins lowers risk of heart disease by about five percentage points, taking them does nothing to lower overall mortality. They're a miracle drug, all right. They've worked miracles for the bottom line of pharmaceutical companies. posted by Sydney on 7/12/2003 09:58:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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