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56 Comments
- alkajazz, on 11/10/2008, -2/+25I'm sure in a few years we will find out that Crestor will increase your chances of having something horrible happen to you.
- Daggorath, on 11/10/2008, -0/+18This study has been brought to you by the pharmaceutical companies that make cholesterol drugs...
- hasslinthehoff, on 11/10/2008, -0/+16Or... "Study Funded by Drug Company Finds that Its Drugs Should be Prescribed for Everyone. Drug Company Stock Skyrockets, CEO Buys New Jet."
Really? We're supposed to take this seriously? Buried for duplicity. - inactive, on 11/10/2008, -1/+17Thats right. Take more drugs. Trust the pharmaceutical companies. And get them all for four dollars at walmart.
- inactive, on 11/10/2008, -1/+11Drugs aren't the answer to everything, although watching american TV advertising you'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise.
Maybe stop eating massive quantities of fatty foods and get your ass of the sofa every now and then and go for a walk. - scoottie, on 11/10/2008, -2/+11society is already over medicated.
- MeatMountain, on 11/10/2008, -1/+9So even if you're healthy you should take their drug? Or you might die? I totally believe this credible source of information, please fill me with strange chemicals!
- e1evene1even, on 11/10/2008, -3/+11More propaganda from 'Big Pharma'.
Change your damn diet. - Chebsi, on 11/10/2008, -1/+8It is worth noting that this study was conducted by Crestor...
- normalkid0615, on 11/10/2008, -0/+7how about eating less french fries and chezburgers
- linagee, on 11/10/2008, -0/+7"so few heart attacks and deaths occurred among these low-risk people that treating everyone like them in the United States could cost up to $9 billion a year"
Let's all spend extra money! - thegools, on 11/10/2008, -0/+7So half of all heart attacks occur in people with low or normal cholesterol, therefore the other half occur in people with high cholesterol....my fuzzy math skills are saying there's no correlation between cholesterol and heart attacks.
In other findings, 99.9% of Americans that drink Ovaltine do not die in terrorist related attacks. So be sure to drink your Ovaltine. - XxtraLarGe, on 11/10/2008, -0/+7Wider cholesterol drug use may save lives--temporarily.
- linagee, on 11/10/2008, -0/+6"More people in the Crestor group saw blood-sugar levels rise or were newly diagnosed with diabetes."
- inactive, on 11/10/2008, -0/+6I wonder what pharmaceutical conglomerate sponsored that study.
I'm gonna guess Glaxo Smith Kline. - ButterLoyalist, on 11/10/2008, -1/+7No. No no no no no no. Drugs are bad.
- OriginalPinkDog, on 11/10/2008, -1/+6Well, how wide is it? I don't like taking pills that are too wide, because they stick in my throat.
(ba dum bum!) - zeblith, on 11/10/2008, -0/+5Welcome to the world of living longer potentially fewer limbs and no cheesecake!
***** that, I'll take death. - phexerian, on 11/10/2008, -0/+5Problems...
1 - The article does not give a link to the study or the name of the study.
2 - The NNT (number needed to treat) is 120, which is very very high.
3 - It uses a NEW test based on CRP, instead of cholesterol. All past evidence leads to cholesterol being the endpoint which leads to heart attacks and strokes.
4 - "Researchers do not know whether the benefits seen in the study were due to reducing CRP or cholesterol, since Crestor did both."
5 - ""We reduced the risk of a heart attack by 54 percent, the risk of a stroke by 48 percent and the chance of needing bypass surgery or angioplasty by 46 percent," Ridker said." - This is the absolute risk reduction and not a relative risk reduction so the numbers look higher.
6 - Crestor was not directly compared to any other drug which makes the study somewhat weaker. (according to the article.)
I don't think the physicians that write the dyslipidemia guidelines are gonna go for this. Too much variablity and bias IMHO.
I assume Astra Zeneca is doing this study to make up for their last study which used surrogate end points instead of primary endpoints.
I can't make a full in depth statement about this study until I actually read it though.
-Phex
-3rd Year PharmD Candidate - byukid, on 11/10/2008, -1/+5Forget that, you want good cholesterol? Supplement fish oil, red yeast rice, and Coenzyme q10. Red yeast rice is so efficient, the FDA attempted to ban it on behalf of the makers of Lipitor because they were losing money. Fortunately the original manufacturers of it actually beat the FDA in Court, having enough money to take it there. It works very well.
- roho76, on 11/10/2008, -0/+4Take our drug so the side affects you have in 5 years will require you to take our other drugs. Taking drugs because there is nothing wrong with you because something might happen in the future? Are people really this dumb?
- wisefool9, on 11/10/2008, -1/+5What a PR spin piece of crap!
Bury this Phama bullsh*t. - linagee, on 11/10/2008, -0/+4What happens when you need the $700 bottle to counteract the side effects of the $4 walmart bottle? (How much does diabetes medicine cost?)
- kmattso, on 11/10/2008, -0/+3I like to sprinkle a little Crestor on my fries.
- StenL, on 11/10/2008, -3/+6"dramatically lowered their chances of dying"
Damn, got to get some of those pills. - johnyquest, on 11/10/2008, -0/+3And what pharm. company do YOU work for?
- azhura, on 11/10/2008, -0/+3Why not just eat healthier and exercise? Yes, you could potentially kill yourself during the process of living healthy, but at least you won't die from a side-effect of some drug that may or may not cause you to live longer.
- KiloKaan, on 11/10/2008, -0/+2I like my drugs narrow
- phexerian, on 11/10/2008, -0/+2It was astra Zeneca actually.
- Rxbrent, on 11/10/2008, -0/+2Specifically AstraZenica........who makes Crestor. No *****.
- docbob84, on 11/10/2008, -0/+2I like that 4 dollar plan. The meds you get on it aren't the newest drugs that the companies make money off of, but the generics that a) anybody can now make and few profit off of, and b) are tried and tested. Before I prescribed Crestor I'd make damn sure none of the other, safer, and cheaper statin drugs would be okay for the person to start with.
- inactive, on 11/10/2008, -0/+2I was coming to remark on that. lol
- inactive, on 11/10/2008, -1/+3I would love to see how they mangled the statistics for this one.
- Barackalypse, on 11/10/2008, -0/+2I wonder what the difference between this drug and the statin Vytorin is, because medical testing of Vytorin concluded: "Full results of a trial of Vytorin and one of its components, Zetia, stunned the cardiac community by showing that although the drugs lowered cholesterol as expected, they failed to reduce heart disease."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23881972/ - NoQuarter, on 11/10/2008, -0/+2Plenty of studies in simvastatin (by far the most-used statin, at least in the UK) are still being initiated, carried out and published which show great benefit in ten-year survival rates (or whatever other endpoint they choose). This drug has been off-patent for a while now and basically costs pennies a month - even the generics companies will make very little from it.
And studies involving tens of thousands of patients have found that the rate of irreversible myopathy or rhabdomyolisis is around 1 per 10,000 patient years - it is not common and is not something that many healthcare professionals will ever see. Myalgia (muscle pain) is a bit more common but is reversible - if this is experienced then the statin can be stopped, and only re-introduced if considered worthwhile.
Considering the benefits of the statins (which have been repeatedly demonstrated over nearly the past twenty years), this risk can in most cases be justified by the benefits. These are drugs with amongst the best evidence base of efficacy and safety (or risk!) of any medicine in use today. - quasipolymath, on 11/10/2008, -0/+2With regard to number 1, I find it a bit irritating that the layman's press typically doesn't find it necessary to include the name of the study. I understand not having a link to it, because most journals are for-pay publications, but at least give a name so that those of us with access can go look it up and evaluate for ourselves. Usually the "boring" stuff, sample sizes, effects, general statistical analysis, potential confounds, is left out of these articles, however this is also crucial to evaluating the validity of the experiment.
When the drug companies use absolute risk as a metric to assess risk reduction, it reminds me of the fact that, in the supplement market, they hire bodybuilders to get fat in order to show "drastic" before and after photos. - inactive, on 11/10/2008, -0/+2Fvckin just eat right and you won't need "Wider cholesterol drug use".
McDee's and Big Pharma go hand in hand I guess
Ah, thats the smell of Amerika! - inactive, on 11/10/2008, -0/+1when I wink that means i'm being sarcastic.
- republicker, on 11/10/2008, -1/+2Take your pills, they are good for you.
- mrnoodles2, on 11/10/2008, -1/+21. Cholesterol Drugs are the number 1 moneymaker in the whole pharmaindustry.
2. Because of this almost every cholesterol/statin drug related studies are fakes or at least manipulated.
3. Eating Healthy and replacing snickers/mars bars with a healthy sip of unsaturated fat, doing like 20 minutes of sports a day is often more than sufficient to avoid medication with those drugs.
Remember the infamous Lipobay? Well, all lipid lowering drugs work the same way and can induce myolyse and muscle weakness and such so it's a very good idea to stay plain of this stuff. - zeblith, on 11/10/2008, -1/+2Weed, dude. Weed.
- jster89, on 11/10/2008, -0/+1Heard of familial hypercholesterolaemia?
- bubba9999, on 11/10/2008, -0/+1GMA talked about this story this morning. The number of participants in the trial was a little low, so the percentages should probably be taken with a grain of salt. Or a statin.
- Meursault, on 11/10/2008, -1/+2Glaxo Smith Kline says Glaxo Smith Kline Drug saves lives, recommends mandatory daily dose for all citizens.
- jster89, on 11/10/2008, -0/+1But most trials are sponsored by drug companies and they have become much more regulated over the years. They were even open in saying that although none of these people had high cholesterol they still had increased levels of C-Reactive Protein (an inflammatory marker) also linked to increased cardiovascular risk.
- quasipolymath, on 11/10/2008, -0/+1@jster89
Confidently delivered, but not the answer to my question. - inactive, on 11/10/2008, -1/+2Those chemicals ruin your liver. Take at your own risk.
- phexerian, on 11/11/2008, -0/+0Vytorin is a combo drug with Zetia and Simvastatin. Crestor is Rosuvastatin. Crestor is stronger and more potent than simvastatin. Crestor can be dosed anytime during the day because of its longer half life whereas simvastatin SHOULD be dosed at bedtime (even though it usually isn't). This is because your body makes more cholesterol during the sleep cycle. Both drugs have data behind it that show decreases in surrogate end points such as LDL and such, but I don't believe I remember seeing a good solid study that showed either of these drugs reduce stroke or heart attack (I could be wrong. It's been about a year since I've studied dyslipidemia). There are more studies pending for both drugs currently. The best statin out on the market is Lipitor which is slightly less potent than Crestor. Lipitor can also be dosed anytime during the day. Lipitor also has the strongest data behind it and it includes data showing decreased mortality and morbidity with decreased heart attacks and stroke. Fortunately, Lipitor will be going generic soon so more people should have access to it in the United States.
-Phex
-3rd Year PharmD Candidate - jster89, on 11/10/2008, -1/+1Eh... no. Your maths is especially fuzzy.
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