Statins: we need an independent review

Abstract

Statins are back in the news. A review published in the Lancet last week, covered in our news story (doi:10.1136/bmj.i4893), presents what its authors clearly consider to be a definitive account of the evidence on statins that should, they say, bring an end to a dangerous debate. Not everyone agrees. Though the benefits of statins for secondary prevention or in people at high risk of cardiovascular disease are undisputed, proposals to offer them to large numbers of people at lower risk remain controversial, much to the frustration of the statin trialists who authored the Lancet review. Commenting in The BMJ this week, Harlan Krumholz agrees on the strong case for the overall benefits of statins, but he wants more acknowledgment of the trials’ limitations (doi:10.1136/ bmj.i4963). These include the lack of good evidence in elderly people, the variation in how adverse event data were collected, and the ageing of the trials themselves.