PHOENIX: Public concern about the safety of statins has led the Cholesterol Treatment Trialists’ (CTT) Collaboration—the highly respected Oxford-based group that has been pooling randomized clinical trials of statins since 1995—to launch a new meta-analysis to assess the relative and absolute risk of adverse events associated with the lipid-lowering therapy.
the analysis, say CTT researchers, is a reaction to a wide range of reports, mostly observational studies—often picked up by the media—suggesting statins are responsible for everything from muscle pain and weakness to cognitive impairment, cataracts, and sleep disturbances.
“This wouldn’t matter if it didn’t have any effect on people’s choices or prescription habits but there is increasing evidence these reports are influencing prescribing and influencing the public,” Colin Baigent, BMBCh (University of Oxford, England), one of the principal investigators of the CTT Collaboration, told TCTMD. “There are several studies suggesting that people are not taking statins even though they are at high risk of cardiovascular disease because of the publicity around statin safety.”