Tag: cardiovascular disease
“New vaccine replaces statins?” Not So Fast!
News reports suggest new drugs may replace statins. PSCK9 inhibitors are useful, but only along with statins in high risk patients not controlled on statins alone, or for patients who can't tolerate statins. They're not about to replace statins.
Most Patients Get No Benefit from Most Drugs
Some people are reluctant to take statins because they don't benefit the majority of patients who take them. Actually, most drugs don't benefit most of the patients who take them. Since we have no way of identifying those who will benefit, we are stuck treating the many to benefit the few.
Anti-inflammatory drugs and heart attacks: How real are the risks?
A new study provides more evidence that anti-inflammatory drugs like naproxen and ibuprofen cause small but real increases in the risk of heart attacks.
Dietary Associations with Cardiovascular and Diabetic Mortality: “Bacon, soda, and too few nuts”?
A recent study attempted to quantify the association of ten dietary factors with deaths from cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Headlines about the study were misleading.
Son of (the unethical and unscientific) Trial To Assess Chelation Therapy rears its ugly head to the tune of $37 million
First, the NCCIH and NHLBI spend $30 million on a clinical trial of quackery for cardiovascular disease that produces predictably negative to at best equivocal results. Then that result, apparently, is enough to justify wasting another $37 million on a followup study—while dozens of other deserving studies go unfunded. Meanwhile STAT News lionizes the principal investigator of both trials as a brave...
Hormone Replacement Therapy for Menopausal Symptoms: Setting the Record Straight
Whether you call them hot flashes or “power surges,” the symptoms of menopause can be very distressing. They were routinely treated with hormone replacement therapy (HRT) until the Women’s Health Initiative study in 2002 persuaded many patients and doctors to abandon that treatment. The results of that study were misunderstood by some and questioned by others, and there continues to be confusion...
An aspirin a day to prevent heart attacks, strokes, and cancer?
Taking an aspirin a day has always been controversial when it comes to preventing disease before it occurs. Now a task force is recommending daily use under some circumstances. Do the benefits really outweigh the risks?
Update on Cholesterol and Statins
The consensus of mainstream medicine is that a high blood level of LDL cholesterol is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease and that lowering high levels can help with prevention and treatment. Statins have been proven effective for lowering cholesterol levels and for decreasing cardiovascular and all-cause mortality. I recently wrote about the new guidelines for statin therapy. Currently half of...
Of the Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy, Bayes, the NIH, and Human Studies Ethics
An experiment is ethical or not at its inception; it does not become ethical post hoc—ends do not justify means. ~ Henry K. Beecher A couple of weeks ago, Dr. Josephine Briggs, the Director of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), posted a short essay on the NCCAM Research Blog touting the results of the Trial to Assess Chelation...
More evidence that routine multivitamin use should be avoided
If scientific evidence guides our health decisions, we will look back at the vitamin craze of the last few decades with disbelief. Indiscriminate use is, in most cases, probably useless and potentially harmful. We are collectively throwing away billions of dollars into supplements, chasing the idea of benefits that have never materialized. Multivitamins are marketed with a veneer of science but that...