Statins reduce cardiovascular disease in healthy people, and why this study is a poke in the eye for the cholesterol hypothesis
Posted on 10 November 2008
Published November 10, 2008 . Filed under: Cholesterol and Statins
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I’m glad you have written about this. I read the study yesterday and, because I have high cholesterol and review with my endocrinolgist next week, got very concerned about the increased pressure he would put on me to take a statin…which I won’t do, but I don’t like being pressurized by doctors.
I was thinking as I read your review of the study that in a way perhaps this study has proved that having elevated levels of high sensitivity C-reactive protein is the cause of CHD ? And that it also proves it’s nothing to do with cholesterol, since the participants had low levels of cholesterol anyway !
I copied this from the study:
“we did not include people with low levels of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein in our trial, since our hypothesis-generating analysis of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein in the Air Force/Texas Coronary Atherosclerosis Prevention Study (AFCAPS/TexCAPS)12 showed extremely low event rates and no evidence that statin therapy lowered vascular risk among persons who had neither hyperlipidemia nor elevated high-sensitivity C-reactive protein levels. Thus, a trial of statin therapy involving people with both low cholesterol and low high-sensitivity C-reactive protein levels would have been not only infeasible in terms of statistical power and sample size but also highly unlikely to show a benefit.”
I suppose I should get my levels of high sensitivity C-reactive protein tested.
Anne
November 10, 2008 @ 3:07 pm
The BBC were pushing this on the news. It was essentially a free advertisement for the drug companies. As you say it seemed to me that cholesterol is not the problem. Inflammation is. So we need to focus on limiting inflammation.
November 10, 2008 @ 4:28 pm
Relationship Between C-Reactive Protein and Glucose Levels in Community-Dwelling Subjects Without Diabetes
(http://care.diabetesjournals.org/cgi/content/full/28/5/1211)
“To our knowledge, this is the first report to indicate a direct, positive relationship between CRP and pre-diabetic glucose levels across the normal range.”
what – glucose in the blood raises CRP?
who’d have thought it?
M
{;
November 10, 2008 @ 7:22 pm
As predicted by Malcolm Kendrick in 2002
” CRP is about to suffer the same fate of other innocent substances in the blood that have the misfortune to rise in people who have heart disease. It is going to be accused of causing heart disease…………….
As a raised CRP is now a recognised risk factor for heart disease, t
November 11, 2008 @ 12:10 am
I don’t think anyone has accused CRP of causing heart disease – it seems to merely be a marker for certain types of inflammatory reactions, so is an indirect measure of cardiovascular risk. The aetiology of atheroma is multifactorial, and both cholesterol and inflammation play a part.
November 13, 2008 @ 1:44 pm
I was put on a statin (simvastatin) after a stroke 6 months ago, I took it for 3 months and just could not get my blood sugar to normalise despite eating a low carb diet. The last 3 months my blood sugars have been perfect, no need for any drugs, just a proper diet.
Kristine
November 14, 2008 @ 4:55 pm
Yet another medication or test that I feel I don’t need being pushed. I had a “discussion” with a female friend the other day about the fact that I was the only woman of my age in my circle who was not on thyroid pills. She thought I should go and be checked. How many doctors’ surgeries are full of people, I won’t say patients, with no symptoms yet receiving medication or checks they don’t want or need?
November 14, 2008 @ 5:16 pm
Ann’s comment about the pressure doctors put on patients to take statins is very pertinent. I am morally certain that this was in part at least the cause of the decline in my recently deceased wife’s health. I expressed my misgivings both to her and to the doctor. In the event she chose to take the doctor’s advice rather than mine. After all, I’m a layman, while he could say “trust me, I’m a doctor.”
November 14, 2008 @ 5:57 pm
So, is there a natural way of keeping inflamation out of the body and RP levels low?
November 14, 2008 @ 10:35 pm
Interesting article to read, I was told that I had inflammation
(the result of a blood test), could someone give me some
advice on how to treat this as the Doctor just gave me the
results but no treatment.
November 15, 2008 @ 12:00 am
Your verdict in a nutshell?
From this anlysis it sounds as if we’d all be better off eating the nuts!
Why (apart from the profits of the pharmacueitcal companies) is heart diease always presented in a linear cause-and-effect way? If statins are that good why do people who do not have high cholesterol get heart attacks?
And is anyone monitoring the possible link between statins and diabetes?
November 15, 2008 @ 12:45 am
This whole statins/cholesterol/hearth disease issue and the pressure GPs are now putting on their patients to take statins is well exposed in the books by Dr. Malcolm Kendrick and Dr. Uffe Ravnskov. These two scholarly – but readable – books should be on your Amazon Christmas list.
There are some great videos on YouTube of Dr Kendrick speaking at last year’s BMJ Conference.
Dr Briffa’s last sentence above hits the spot.
November 15, 2008 @ 10:56 am
To clarify whether CRP is a bystander or active participant in atherogenesis, a 2008 study compared people with various genetic CRP variants. Those with a high CRP due to genetic variation had no increased risk of cardiovascular disease compared to those with a normal or low CRP
(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18971492)
November 15, 2008 @ 12:57 pm
In a news article about the JUPITER study the BMJ gave this quote,
“Peter Weissberg, medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said that the results strongly support the “lower is better” approach to cholesterol management.”
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/nov12_1/a2523
Let us pray … for such dopey doctors as Peter Weissberg …
PS. Never minding the appalling-science, our esteemed friend Dr Benjamin Goldacre has just poured a little tepid water over the statistical garbage broadcast by the media whores of the pharmaceutical industry. Let us pray for Dr Ben …
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/nov/15/1
November 15, 2008 @ 1:41 pm
“So, is there a natural way of keeping inflammation out of the body and CRP levels low?”
Hi Cathy, I think you mean to say “keeping inflammation levels low”.
Sure, reducing your carbohydrate intake to <60 grams/day for starters will help a lot. There has also been research that shows that supplementing with magnesium will reduce CRP levels. Magnesium deficiency is common in our Western society.
After a lot of experimenting with different forms of magnesium I am getting the best results with magnesium chloride hexahydate in a concentrated liquid solution. I take about 600-800 mg a day of elemental magnesium from magnesium chloride (which yields 12% of magnesium) in divided doses. You can usually order magnesium chloride in bulk from a chemist. My CRP levels is at the very lowest end of the scale.
November 15, 2008 @ 11:17 pm
Thank you so much David. I will certainly try the Magnesium Chloride.
Many thanks,
November 16, 2008 @ 11:50 pm
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