Statins Safer Than We Thought

The potential side effects of statins are largely exaggerated and the cholesterol reducing tablets are safe and effective, a major medical review has found. Statins, the most-prescribed drug in the UK, are taken by around six million people every day, but unreliable studies have overstated their dangers, according to the study. Safety concerns could have led hundreds of thousands of people to stop taking the life-saving treatment, which has been the subject of years of controversy and conflicting reports. But a review of the available evidence on statins has found that the risks of negative reaction are far outweighed by the benefits. Too much weight has been placed upon unreliable evidence from observational studies, while the results from randomized drugs trials, which are reliable, have not been properly acknowledged.

The report has been released in a bid to avert an MMR style public health scare, when there was a significant decline in the uptake of the vaccine after a report, which has since been completely discredited, linked it to autism. Researchers saw in a very painful way the consequences of publishing a paper which had a huge impact on the confidence in a safe and effective vaccine. They have learnt lessons from that episode and those lessons need to be widely propagated. Statins help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, such as a heart attack or stroke, by helping to lower harmful cholesterol levels in the body. Cardiovascular disease is the most common cause of death in the UK, and statins prevent 80,000 heart attacks and strokes every year.