Interview
with Barbara H. Roberts, M.D.,
author of The Truth About Statins: Risks and Alternatives to Cholesterol-Lowering
Drugs
Statins
are medications which lower cholesterol by inhibiting an enzyme involved in
its production by the liver and other organs. First approved by the FDA in
1987, statins are arguably the most widely prescribed medicine in the
industrialized world today--and the most profitable, representing $26
billion a year in profits to the drug industry. In fact, Lipitor was the world's
best selling drug until its patent expired recently. Yet, most trials that
prove statins' effectiveness in preventing cardiac events and death have been
funded by companies and principle investigators who stand to benefit from their
wide use. In February, the FDA
warned that statins can increase users' risk of type 2 diabetes and memory
loss, confusion and other cognition problems.
Barbara
H. Roberts, M.D., is Director of the Women's Cardiac Center at the Miriam
Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island and Associate Clinical Professor of
Medicine at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University. She spent two years
at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of
Health (NIH) where she was involved in the first clinical trial that demonstrated
a beneficial effect of lowering cholesterol on the incidence of heart disease. In
addition to The Truth About Statins: Risks and Alternatives to
Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs, she is also author of How to
Keep from Breaking Your Heart: What Every Woman Needs to Know about
Cardiovascular Disease.
Martha
Rosenberg: Statins have become so popular with adults
middle-aged and older in industrialized countries, they are almost a
pharmaceutical rite of passage. Yet you write in your new book there is little
evidence they are effective in many groups and no evidence they are effective
in one group, women without heart disease.. Worse, you provide evidence,
including stories from your own patients, that they are doing serious harm.
Barbara
Roberts: Yes. Every week in my
practice I see patients with serious side effects to statins and many did not
need to be treated with statins in the first place. These side effects range
from debilitating muscle and joint pain to transient global amnesia,
neuropathy, cognitive dysfunction, fatigue and muscle weakness. Most of these
symptoms subside or improve when they are taken off statins. There is even
growing evidence of a statin link to Lou Gehrig's disease.
Martha
Rosenberg: One patient you write about caused a
fire in her home by forgetting that the stove was on. Another was a professor
who experienced such memory loss on a statin he could no longer teach; others
ended up in wheelchairs. The only thing more shocking than the side effects you
write about is the apparent blindness of the medical establishment to them.
Until half a year ago, there were practically no warnings at all.
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