Are the sides effects of cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins really all in the mind? A new Lancet study appears to suggest that this is the case.
Scottish family physician Malcolm Kendrick doesn’t think so. He is author of The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Causes Heart Disease And How To Avoid It. He is also author of Doctoring Data, How To Sort Out Medical Advice From Medical Nonsense.
Of the new Lancet study, Kendrick says that he has found ‘a weakness – or two – or three – or … you get the picture’. Here is a shortened version of his assessment:
By Malcolm Kendrick
I have been somewhat silent over the last two or three weeks on this blog. The word ‘swamped’ springs to mind. The main swamping thing (alongside work and suchlike) that I have been doing is to analyse the Lancet paper which claimed that, basically, statins cause no adverse events.
Prof Peter Sever (corresponding author), followed up the publication of this paper with statements such as:
‘While statins do have some potentially serious side effects, including a slightly raised risk of developing type II diabetes and, very rarely, a potentially fatal muscle condition known as rhabdomyolysis,….the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) should remove warnings of side-effects including muscle pain and weakness, sleep disturbance, erectile dysfunction and problems with cognitive function.’
A real ‘tragedy’?
In an interview with UK national newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, Sever went on to say that “There are people out there who are dying because they’re not taking statins.
‘And the numbers are large, the numbers are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands.
He said that it was a “tragedy” akin to the MMR scandal that high-risk patients were not taking drugs that could save their lives.
Urging patients not to ‘gamble’ with the risk of heart attacks and strokes, he said that “bad science” had misled the public, deterring many from taking life-saving medication
And so on and so forth. As you may expect, the mainstream medical media and other doctors had pick up his paper with great enthusiasm.
Where does truth lie?
Here is a Dr John Mandrola writing a commentary in Medscape.
‘Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in which patients don’t know whether they are taking the statin or a placebo report nearly identical rates of muscle-related adverse events. Observational studies, however, report higher rates of statin muscle complaints.
‘As a practising doctor, I have always felt the truth lies closer to the observational data. A study published recently in the Lancet suggests I may be wrong. This new study, which has impeccable methods, suggests statin muscle complaints stem not from human muscles but from the human brain.
Results ‘hard to dispute’?
‘The results turned on whether people knew they were on the statin. In the double-blinded phase of the trial, muscle symptoms occurred at the same rate—2.0% per year in both the statin and placebo groups. In the second phase of the trial, when people knew they were on the statin, side effects occurred at a higher rate (1.3% per year) in the statin group vs the placebo group (1.0% per year). This difference reached statistical significance (hazard ratio 1.41, CI 1.10–1.79; P=0.006).
‘These are remarkable observations, which are hard to dispute. In an accompanying editorial, two Spanish authors emphasized the obvious strengths of this paper: these were the same patients in both phases, and there was no run-in period in which patients intolerant to statins were excluded.’
So, this is a slam dunk. Right?
Well, I have taken a pretty forensic look at the Lancet Paper. It has the snappy title: Adverse events associated with unblinded, but not with blinded, statin therapy in the Angle-Scandinavian Cardiac Outcomes Trial – Lipid Lowering Arm (ASCOT-LLA); a randomised double-blind placebo-controlled trial and its non-randomised non-blind extension phase.
Getting facts right
It may not surprise you to know that Professor Sir Rory Collins was a co-author. I believe it may have a weakness – or two – or three – or … you get the picture.
However, if you are going to attempt to argue against such a paper, or pick holes in it, you need to study it with extreme care. You must make sure that you have your facts absolutely right.
Then, you need to look at all other associated papers around the entire ASCOT study. For example, I have amused myself, or not, by studying ‘Rationale, design, methods and baseline demography of participants in the Anglo-Scandinavian Cardiac Outcomes Trial’…. And a few other papers as well.
I have also been speaking to some very bright people who understand exactly how clinical studies are done, how adverse events are reported and recorded. It is an arcane and opaque world indeed.
You need to try to understand comments such as this, in the paper:
‘After randomisation, study participants were scheduled to be seen at 6 weeks and 3 months and then at 6 monthly intervals thereafter during both the blinding randomised and non-blinding randomised phases of the ASCOT-LLA (until the ASCOT-BPLA completed – (yes this was two trials in one). At each study visit, all adverse events (AEs) reported by participants were recorded by the study team in the case report form. Specific questions relating to any putative AEs were not asked at these visits.
Reports of AEs by the study participants were initially recorded verbatim and subsequently classified with use of the Medical Dictionary for Regulatory Activities into 26 separate system organ class (SOC) groups, 2288 unique preferred terms, and 5109 separated low-level terms…..’
Click here to read: Don’t swallow what doctors say on statins
Where’s the sense?
Now, I defy anyone to make sense of that. (I had no idea what the word putative meant in this context. Having looked it up, I am none the wiser.) Either the researchers recorded adverse reports initially onto a case report form, or recorded comments verbatim and subsequently classified them. You can do one, or the other, not both. However, as for attempting to reclassify verbatim reports, in several different languages, 15 years later….
Hmmmmm.
However, whilst trying to get my head around that, those involved in this data analysis piqued by interest. It turns out that the lead author, Ajay Gupta, received financial support from the ‘Foundation for Circulatory Health’. I had never heard of this “charity” before. So I tried to find out its funding – always tricky. You can usually find out who provides the dosh but not how much.
Looking at their accounts, the Foundation for Circulatory Health seems to receive funding largely (almost entirely?) from the pharmaceutical industry. Companies include, guess who, Pfizer, who funded the initial ASCOT study and who also funded the recent Lancet Nocebo paper.
Supporters (of the Foundation for Circulatory Health):
- Pfizer
- Sanofi-Aventis
- Menarini
- Novartis
- Medtronic
- Boston Scientific
- Pulsecor
- Patients attending Hypertension and Cardiology Clinics
Memory jogging
Digging further it then turned out that Peter Sever and Neil Poulter (key authors on the ‘nocebo’ paper) are also directors of the Foundation for Circulatory Health, which funded Dr Gupta to work on the Nocebo paper – and which Pfizer supported.
Well, who’d a thunk? (Well, me actually.)
Neil Poulter is a very well-known researcher in CV medicine, well known to those who keep track of such things. His name turns up all over the place. Here was his declaration of interest statement in the Lancet paper:
‘Neil Poulter’s institution (Imperial College London) held a grant for the conduct of the Anglo-Scandinavian Cardiac Outcomes Trial in the UK and Ireland and he has also received a speaker’s honoraria from Pfizer outside the submitted work. He is also a recipient of the National Institute for Health Research Senior Investigator Award to Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.’
Sounds quite reasonable(ish) and above board. However, compare this with a conflict of interest statement from 2008: ‘Poulter disclosed receiving ad hoc payments to appear on advisory boards/deliver lectures for “all the major pharmaceutical companies that produce major agents in hypertension and CV medicine” and receiving grant income from Pfizer and Servier’.
Perhaps he just forgot that he had received money from all the major pharmaceutical companies that produce major agents in hypertension and CV medicine. Must be hard to keep track of what you have previously disclosed. Is there a time limit on conflicts of interest?
For now, I shall continue to dig and to analyse the paper. Watch this space.
- This article first appeared on Dr Kendrick’s blog.
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I knew nothing about the side-effects of Statins until I started taking them. Walking along, in a hurry when, I thought someone had stabbed me in the thigh with a meat skewer. Pain? I’d never felt anything like it. I could hardly breath. When I managed to drag myself back home and – a good while later – started Googling, all was revealed.
What was the reaction from my GP? Try a different statin. What was the reaction from my consultant? Try a different statin. Would either of them listen to what I was saying about the flawed research or do their own checking? No. Were either of them getting paid to prescribe these terrible drugs? I do not know.
But I do know that a whole series of GPs after that gave me the pro-statin line.
Bob C
Bob, I seem to know all the ‘rare’ people with adverse effects from statins. Maybe they’re imagining it, or maybe statins are a useless and damaging drug. The profit from statins is the only thing keeping the cholesterol theory alive.
CVD and diabetes are now seen as drug deficiency diseases, and obesity as a surgery deficiency disease. Yet isn’t it strange that before low fat diets were invented these diseases were rare, and since the “antidotes” were invented they have become commoner? Kerching!
I had to stop taking statins (Lipitor) because it was severely affecting my short term memory. “Would you rather risk a heart attack than have memory loss?” my doctor sneered. My reply: “Have you ever forgotten your wife’s birthday? I’d rather take my chances with heart attacks any day!”
Your doctor is a fool and you made the right decision. A recent article by Dr Mark Porter for ‘The Times’ in the UK stated that perhaps one high-risk person in 400 benefitted slightly from statins. A decent mediterranean diet would reduce risk by treble that amount and without side effects. The diet referred to looked very LCHF to me. Forget pasta and pitza.
Just about everyone I know who’s taking statins has had muscle pains that disappeared when they stopped taking these useless pills. My brother was losing his memory too, but maybe his wife just imagined it.
With articles such as this, pharma has manged to destroy people’s faith in science. I’d have a cleaner conscience as a road sweeper than working with these statin pushers.