Quite simply, doctors are becoming less and less sold on statins because the benefits are not truly apparent. So our genius drug company response is to cook the stats in order to sell it to a larger population.
Yet i do not think they are placebos as they do cause changes. It is just that none of those changes are actually a benefit except as believed once the decline in cholesterol. Now we are not so sure
It is noted as well that if you take statins, you also should take a matching dose of co enzyme as this ameliorates muscle reactions.
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Total racket: Drug companies redefine patient 'qualification' for statin drugs to triple sales
Saturday, August 15, 2015 by: David Gutierrez,
NaturalNews) A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association
continues the trend of pushing for ever greater numbers of people to be
permanently put onto cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, even as
research is increasingly showing the drugs to be useless for preventing
the negative effects of cardiovascular disease.
Statins block an
enzyme necessary for the body to synthesize cholesterol, and have been
definitively proven to lower cholesterol levels. Even in the absence of
any evidence that the drugs actually improved long-term health outcomes,
these short-term results were sufficient for the medical industry to
wholeheartedly embrace statins as a miracle drug and start pushing them
on ever-increasing numbers of people. Statins are among the top selling
drugs in the world.
In 2013, the American College of Cardiology
and the American Heart Association released new guidelines for
cholesterol management that lowered the threshold for statin use. Under
the new guidelines, 49 percent - essentially half - of all U.S.
residents between the ages of 40 and 75 should be taking the drugs.
That's 56 million people in the United States alone.
New recommendations would triple the number on statins
In the new study, conducted by researchers from Boston University, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, North Shore University,
and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, the authors note that
it has not previously been tested whether the 2013 statin guidelines
are better at identifying people at high risk of cardiovascular disease
than the earlier (2004) guidelines.
The researchers evaluated
more than 2,400 participants from the second- and third-generation
cohorts of the ongoing Framingham Heart Study for statin eligibility
under both guidelines. They found that while only 14 percent of
participants qualified under the 2004 guidelines, nearly three times as
many - 39 percent - qualified under the 2013 rules.
Participants were screened for coronary artery calcification, a heart disease
risk factor, between 2002 and 2005 and were then followed for an
average of 9.4 years. The researchers found that the 2013 guidelines
were indeed more effective at predicting risk of cardiovascular disease
events and subclinical coronary artery disease than the 2004 guidelines.
While
the study will certainly be taken by the medical establishment as
support for the new guidelines, there is one very important question it
doesn't ask: Does giving that extra 25 percent of people statins
actually improve their long-term health outcomes?
Increasingly, the body of evidence is pointing to "no."
Statin benefits based on "statistical deception"
The
Achilles heel of the statin consensus is that there's actually no
evidence that high cholesterol levels cause heart disease. Instead,
research is increasingly suggesting that high cholesterol is probably a marker of underlying problems. In that case, lowering it would not necessarily help anything.
And indeed, that's what seems to be the case. In an article published earlier this year in the Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology,
researchers reviewed the body of evidence on the safety and
effectiveness of statins. They concluded that statins have "failed to
substantially improve cardiovascular outcomes," and that their supposed
effectiveness is based on "statistical deception."
For example,
their independent analysis of two major statin trials found only a 1
percent reduction in cardiovascular disease among those taking the drugs, even though the studies had been promoted as showing a 36 to 54 percent risk reduction.
The
researchers also found that media reports and medical literature have
consistently downplayed the very real risks of statins.
"Increased
rates of cancer, cataracts, diabetes, cognitive impairments and
musculoskeletal disorders more than offset the modest cardiovascular
benefits of statin treatment," the researchers wrote.
Sources:
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