What You Need To Know About Cholesterol Lowering Drugs

The January 28, 2008 edition of Business Week focuses on the drug, Lipitor and asks the question, “do cholesterol drugs do any good?”

The basic premise that statin drugs are worth the risk is taken into question and, by and large, research suggests that the benefits of statins such as Lipitor are overstated.

James Wright is a professor at the University of British Columbia and is the director of the government-funded Therapeutics Initiative, whose purpose is to pore over the data on particular drugs and figure out how well they work. He found that for those patients without active heart disease (the majority of patients prescribed drugs like Lipitor), there was no benefit in people over the age of 65, no matter how much their cholesterol declines, and no benefit in women of any age. There was no overall reduction in total deaths or illnesses requiring hospitalization—despite big reductions in "bad" cholesterol. "Most people are taking something with no chance of benefit and a risk of harm," says Wright.

In clinical trials of statins, side effects were relatively rare which may be a result of biased reporting. In the real world, approximately 15% of patients suffer side effects. After muscle aches, common complaints include cognitive problems ranging from mild confusion to loss of memory.

One clinical trial also showed a relationship between statin use and cancer risk but that trial was considered not worth considering by the guidelines author (paid by drug maker Pfizer.

BOTTOM LINE: The safety of statins in long-term use "is an incredibly important question for which we have very little data," says Dr. Beatrice Golomb of the University of California at San Diego. Steve Hoffman, a chiropractor in San Diego reports that though prescribed Lipitor years ago, refused and transformed his “dangerous” cholesterol levels with food combining for his metabolic type, regular chiropractic adjustments and nutritional supplementation…all with NO side effects!