Do patients really need statins?

Researchers found a clear reduction in heart attack risk for each healthy lifestyle factor investigated. Photo / 123RF

Patients should have greater choice over taking statins and stop using them if they are suffering side effects, according to leading doctors.

The doctors argue that only a "limited" number of patients benefit from the drug, and that patients can "safely" stop using them if they experience unwanted effects, in an editorial for UK medical journal Prescriber.

Professor James McCormack, Dr Aseem Malhotra and Professor David Newman say that around one in 10 patients suffer from effects including sore throats, nausea, digestive problems, muscle and joint pain when taking the drugs.

But they argue that for healthy people who have never had a heart attack or stroke, "statins likely have either no effect on mortality or at best less than 0.5 per cent benefit. In other words less than one in every 200 people who took a statin lived longer because of it".

They say 80 per cent of cases of cardiovascular disease are linked to lifestyle factors and patients should be better educated on the impact of changing their diet, exercise and smoking.

The group is calling on the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (Nice) and the American Heart Association to to give more attention to individual preference when prescribing medicines instead of using treatment targets.

Dr Tim Chico, reader in cardiovascular medicine and consultant cardiologist at the University of Sheffield, said he "completely" disagreed that treatment targets remove individual preference.

"These targets simply guide doctors as to which patients might benefit from a treatment," Chico said.

"The decision whether to start or continue a drug treatment should always rest with the patient, with this decision guided by information from the doctor."

He added: "This editorial seems to want to present a false choice between drug treatment or lifestyle factors such as diet, when both are important."

But Sir Richard Thompson, former president of the Royal College of Physicians, said the editorial offered a timely reminder "that it is not easy to discover how patients weigh the benefits of a medication against its risks".

"Setting a threshold for treatment based on the results of clinical trials further unbalances how doctors and patients discuss how to choose between a drug therapy or an alternative treatment."

- AAP