Statins: Do They Make Fries Healthier?

Imagine if the next time you pulled into McDonald’s, the drive-thru guy asked if you’d like a statin with your fries. It could happen. In fact, it just might protect you from a heart attack, according to researchers at the Imperial College London, who announced their findings in a paper to be published August 15 in the American Journal of Cardiology.

Dr. Darrel Francis and associates at the college’s National Heart and Lung Institute calculated that popping a statin offsets the increased cardiovascular risk of eating a Quarter-Pounder with cheese and a small milkshake.

“Statins don’t cut out all of the unhealthy effects of burgers and fries,” explains Francis. “It’s better to avoid fatty food altogether. But we’ve worked out that in terms of your likelihood of having a heart attack, taking a statin can reduce your risk to more or less the same degree as a fast food meal increases it.”

What’s more, because they have an impressive safety record and are relatively inexpensive, Francis suggests treating statins as condiments. Right next to the napkins and straws, you’d see packets of ketchup, mustard, salt, and individually wrapped cholesterol reducers. He estimates that making them available like this (with the proper cautions to consult your doctor before partaking, of course) would cost companies about the same per customer as providing the extra ketchup.

But why stop here? Stretching Francis’s logic just a bit, here’s what else I’d like to see:

>Diabetes medication with every Big Gulp.

>Gastric bypass discount-coupon with each Whopper.

>Free stem cells with every motorcycle purchase.

>Liver vitamins with every bottle of tequila.

>Cigarette vending machines that also provide a lung screening

Got any more? Post your suggestions in the comments field below.

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Research shows thousands of patients could be taking statins needlessly

Scientists said they have found a much better way to work out which people are in danger of developing heart problems.

Half of the middle-aged adults they studied were found to have no coronary artery calcium, and only a handful went on to suffer a heart attack or a stroke.

They said the findings have “important public health implications” and could mean significant cost savings if cholesterol-lowering drugs are prescribed only for those who would genuinely benefit.

But other experts point out that the test for coronary artery calcium is an expensive scan that involves exposing the patient to radiation, so is unlikely to be used widely. In addition, they say statins do have long-term benefits, such as slowing hardening of the arteries, so doctors are unlikely to take patients off them.

However the paper, published in The Lancet today, is the latest in a series suggesting too many people are taking the medicine once seen as a wonder drug. Up to 7million middle-aged and older people in England are thought to take statins, at a cost of ?500million a year to the NHS. There are growing fears many are the “worried well” at low risk of heart problems, and other studies have linked statins to liver or kidney problems.

In the latest paper, Dr Michael Blaha at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and colleagues studied 2,083 people with an average age of 67 who had low cholesterol, were not on statins and did not have diabetes. Of those, 46 per cent had high levels of high-sensitivity protein, which a previous study known as Jupiter had suggested would make them suitable for statin therapy.

The researchers used cardiac scans to work out the levels of calcium in the arteries of the patients, and followed up their progress about six years later. They found 47 per cent of the patients had low levels of arterial calcium, and hardly any had suffered heart complications.

Only six per cent of the coronary heart disease events (interruption of the blood supply, leading to heart attacks) and 17 per cent of the cardiovascular disease events (heart attacks or stroke) were in those with no signs of calcium in their arteries. The researchers concluded just one person in every 549 with a low calcium score would be stopped from having a heart attack by taking statins for five years. The study suggests statins may be best prescribed just for those with higher levels of calcium in their arteries.

The experts said their findings show doctors should try to measure atherosclerosis – thickening of the artery walls – by calculating calcium levels rather than just using blood tests and traditional risk factors such as family history or obesity. They added this may “represent a more appropriate allocation of resources, and reduce overall health-care cost”.

Prof Peter Weissberg, the medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said: “The greatest challenge for preventive medicine is identifying people who are at highest risk of heart disease and who should be given drugs, particularly statins, to reduce that risk.

“The study shows coronary artery calcium is better than protein for identifying people at highest risk of a heart attack. But the former is expensive and involves radiation so is unlikely to be offered as a screening test for everyone.”

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