Statins and death due to any cause - all doubts removed?
Authors
Ilija Barukčić
Keywords
Statins | Causal relationship
Publication Details
Volume: 5; Issue: 12; Dec-2019 | ISSN: 2454-5422
Abstract
Objective:
To date, it is quite common to claim that some patient groups benefit from statin therapy in both primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease while equally the use of higher-intensity statin therapies is emphasized. In this Review, the efficacy of statin therapy in light of the study data available is explored.
Methods:
All in all, 40 studies with a sample size of n = 88388 were re-analyzed. The exclusion relationship was used to test the null-hypothesis: a certain statin does exclude death due to any cause. The causal relationship k was used to test the data for causality. The level of significance was set to Alpha = 0,05.
Results:
The data of the studies reanalyzed provide convincing evidence that statins unfortunately do not exclude death due to any cause. Overwhelming evidence suggests that the risk of harmful effects of statin therapy far outweigh any real or perceived benefit.
Conclusions:
An immediate statin therapy discontinuation should be considered.
