Side effects of statins dangerously exaggerated, review warns
Statins are the most-prescribed drug in the UK, taken by around six million people every day
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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, published in the Lancet medical journal, has found that the risks of a negative reaction are far outweighed by the benefits.
Too much weight has been placed upon unreliable evidence from observational studies, while the results from randomised drugs trials, which are reliable, have not been properly acknowledged, the study stated.
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.
Dr Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, said: “We 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.
“We have learnt lessons from that episode and those lessons need to be widely propagated - they are lessons for all journals, all scientists.”
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, reported the Guardian.
The estimated cost of a daily dose of low-cost statin therapy is about £2 per month.
“This is the first time that all of the evidence has been brought together on both safety and benefits into a single publication,” said Dr Horton.
“So this is a one-stop shop of the evidence on safety and benefits of statins. There has been nowhere where you can get all of that information in a single place.”
The review found that side-effects can include developing muscle pain, diabetes or a haemorrhagic stroke, but suggestions that statins cause other conditions, such as memory loss, cataracts, kidney injury, liver disease, sleep disturbance, aggression or erectile dysfunction, are not accurate.
Oxford University's Professor Rory Collins, one of the authors of the review, said misleading claims about harmful side-effects was causing a “serious cost to public health”.
He added: “Our review shows that the numbers of people who avoid heart attacks and strokes by taking statin therapy are very much larger than the numbers who have side-effects with it.
“In addition, whereas most of the side-effects can be reversed with no residual effects by stopping the statin, the effects of a heart attack or stroke not being prevented are irreversible and can be devastating."
Additional reporting by Press Association
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