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I am not asking for professional medical advice, but personal opinions about the benefits or obstacles about statins.

Sorry - Just a personal query. A few weeks back, some FReeper mentioned 'My wife is a pharmacist; she will not let me use statins." I have no idea how to find out who/ when -- but would love to chat briefly with the person who posted. Thanks

Earlier this week, the Chair of the British Parliament Science and Technology Committee, Sir Norman Lamb MP made calls for a full investigation into cholesterol lowering statin drugs. It was instigated after a letter was written to him signed by a number of eminent international doctors including the editor of the BMJ, the Past President of the Royal College of Physicians and the Director of the Centre of Evidence Based Medicine in Brazil wrote a letter calling for a full parliamentary inquiry into the controversial medication[1]. It’s lead author Cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra makes the case for why’s there’s an...

Patients with the rare muscle disease, idiopathic inflammatory myositis, are nearly twice as likely to have been on statin therapy than matched population controls, an Australian study shows. Using data from 1990-2014 from the SA myositis database, 221 patients older than 40 and diagnosed with histologically confirmed idiopathic inflammatory myositis were compared with 662 matched controls from a general population state database. Compared with controls, patients with myositis had a 79% increased likelihood of exposure to statins, reported the authors, led by Dr Vidya Limaye, a rheumatology staff specialist at the Royal Adelaide Hospital.

Should a 76-year-old who doesn’t have heart disease, but does have certain risk factors for developing it, take a statin to ward off heart attacks or strokes? You’d think we’d have a solid answer to this question. These widely prescribed medications lower cholesterol to reduce cardiovascular disease, the nation’s most common killer, and get much of the credit for the nation’s plummeting rates of heart attacks and strokes. When they entered common use in the 1990s, “it was very exciting,” said Dr. Ariela Orkaby, a geriatrician at the Harvard Medical School and lead author of a new study on statins...

Fears are growing over the side effects of cholesterol-lowering pillsScientists have found the heart disease drug badly affects our stem cells, the internal medical system which repairs damage to our bodies and protects us from muscle and joint pain as well as memory loss. Last night experts warned patients to “think very carefully” before taking statins as a preventative medicine. A GP expert in the field said: “They just make many patients feel years older. Side effects mimic the ageing process.” The new research by scientists at Tulane University in New Orleans has reignited the debate about statin side effects which many doctors...

In a rather self-serving review article entitled “A historical perspective on the discovery of statins,” Japanese biochemist Akira Endo hits all the conventional and PC notes in his 10-page (including references) trip down memory lane. From the get-go, in the abstract itself he tells us that… “Cholesterol is essential for the functioning of all human organs, but it is nevertheless the cause of coronary heart disease. Building on that knowledge, scientists and the pharmaceutical industry have successfully developed a remarkably effective class of drugs–the statins–that lower cholesterol levels in blood and reduce the frequency of heart attacks.” We would expect...

Part 1: My Spirit is Broken: Will the New Statin Guidelines Do More Harm Than Good? “You use them or you die.” This is what a doctor told Sulette Brown, a psychotherapist from Oklahoma, when she balked at taking statins, after she’d been rushed to the emergency room for a heart attack. Since that night, her life has changed in ways she could not have imagined.

Drinking Earl Grey tea could help guard against heart disease, it has emerged, after a study found that bergamot extract - a key ingredient in the hot drink - is just as effective as statins at controlling cholesterol. Scientists believe bergamot, a fragrant Mediterranean citrus fruit which gives Earl Grey tea its distinctive flavour, can significantly lower cholesterol. They say it contains enzymes known as HMGF (hydroxy methyl glutaryl flavonones) which can attack proteins in the body known to cause heart disease. The study found bergamot could even be as effective as statins, used to control cholesterol but which can...

For decades, if you asked your doctor what your odds were of suffering a heart attack, the answer would turn on a number: your cholesterol level. Now the nation’s first new heart disease prevention guidelines in a decade take a very different approach, focusing more broadly on risk and moving away from specific targets for cholesterol. The guidance offers doctors a new formula for estimating risk that includes age, gender, race and factors such as whether someone smokes.

For years doctors have been focused on specific cholesterol numbers to help patients prevent initial and recurrent heart attack. New guidelines mean only those at high risk will be recommended to take the drugs. So how will doctors decide who is at high risk? More importantly what are physicians already saying about changes? Dr. Neil Stone of Northwestern University chaired the committee that wrote the new guidelines, which was a collaborative effort between the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology. No more statins to control cholesterol numbers say expertsInstead of looking at cholesterol numbers Stone said physicians...

Revised guidelines for heart health are set to move away from target-based approach. Soon after Joseph Francis learned that his levels of ‘bad’ LDL cholesterol sat at twice the norm, he discovered the short­comings of cholesterol-lowering drugs — and of the clinical advice guiding their use. Francis, the director of clinical analysis and reporting at the Veterans Health Administration (VA) in Washington DC, started taking Lipitor (atorvastatin), a cholesterol-lowering statin and the best-selling drug in pharmaceutical history. His LDL plummeted, but still hovered just above a target mandated by clinical guidelines. Adding other medications had no effect, and upping the...

People with diabetes face the possibility of a number of serious complications, including poor wound healing. Now a new study has found that application of a topical statin drug speeds up wound healing in mice with diabetes.Could a statin drug help diabetic wound healing? Diabetes has several characteristics that make recovering from wounds more challenging. For example, people with diabetes have a weakened immune system, which makes healing more problematic. Nerve damage (neuropathy), which is common in diabetes, can make individuals unable to feel the pain associated with a cut or blister until it becomes infected. Diabetes is also...

I can't find the article that Rush was talking about. Does anybody have a link?

We’re overdosing on cholesterol-lowering statins, and the consequence could be a sharp increase in the incidence of Type 2 diabetes. This past week, the Food and Drug Administration raised questions about the side effects of these drugs and developed new labels for these medications that will now warn of the risk of diabetes and memory loss. The announcement said the risk was “small” and should not materially affect the use of these medications. The data are somewhat ambiguous for memory loss. But the magnitude of the problem for diabetes becomes much more apparent with careful examination of the data from...

Federal health officials on Tuesday added new safety alerts to the prescribing information for statins, the cholesterol-reducing medications that are among the most widely prescribed drugs in the world, citing rare risks of memory loss, diabetes and muscle pain. It is the first time that the Food and Drug Administration has officially linked statin use with cognitive problems like forgetfulness and confusion, although some patients have reported such problems for years. Among the drugs affected are huge sellers like Lipitor, Zocor, Crestor and Vytorin. But federal officials and some medical experts said the new alerts should not scare people away...

Statins, traditionally known as cholesterol-lowering drugs, may reduce mortality among patients hospitalized with influenza, according to a new study released online by the Journal of Infectious Diseases. It is the first published observational study to evaluate the relationship between statin use and mortality in hospitalized patients with laboratory-confirmed influenza virus infection, according to Vanderbilt's William Schaffner, M.D., professor and chair of Preventive Medicine. "We may be able to combine statins with antiviral drugs to provide better treatment for patients seriously ill with influenza," said Schaffner, who co-authored the study led by Meredith Vandermeer, MPH, of the Oregon Public Health Division.

New study reveals molecular mechanism promoting the breakdown of plaque by statinsIn a new study, NYU Langone Medical Center researchers have discovered how cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins promote the breakdown of plaque in the arteries... The findings support a large clinical study that recently showed patients taking high-doses of the cholesterol-lowering medications not only reduced their cholesterol levels but also reduced the amount of plaque in their arteries. However, until now researchers did not fully understand how statins could reduce atherosclerosis, the accumulation of fat and cholesterol that hardens into plaque in arteries, a major cause of mortality in Western...

New research demonstrates that a diet based around plants, nuts and high-fiber grains lowered "bad" cholesterol more than a low-saturated-fat diet that was also vegetarian, meaning that one's dietary changes could be an alternative to statin medications for many people saving persons from some devastating side effects of the medications. After six months, people on the low-saturated-fat diet saw a drop in LDL cholesterol of 8 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL), on average, according to findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association. (excerpted)

The risk of developing type 2 diabetes rises with increasing doses of statin therapy, according to the findings of a large meta-analysis in the June 22/29 issue of JAMA. "Our findings suggest that clinicians should be vigilant for the development of diabetes in patients receiving intensive statin therapy," said Dr. David Preiss of the BHF Glasgow (Scotland) Cardiovascular Research Centre at the University of Glasgow, and his associates. Several recent studies have suggested that statin therapy may raise the risk of diabetes, and some have indicated that the risk is higher at higher doses of the drugs. Dr. Preiss and...