Is this proof pill-pop STOP TAKING

ASK IF YOU REALLY NEED TO BE ON A STATIN

THESE cholesterol-lowering drugs, which include atorvastatin and simvastatin, are prescribed to at least seven million people in the UK to lower levels of ‘bad’ cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart attack or stroke.

In 2014, NHS experts recommended that everyone with a 10 per cent or higher risk of having a heart attack or stroke in the next ten years should be prescribed 20mg a day; those with established heart disease should start on 80mg a day.

In practice, this means almost all men over 60 and all women over 75 qualify for statins prescriptions — in total, 11.8 million people, according to U.S. research published in the Journal of British General Practice in 2017.

And it’s not just older people. More than a third of 30 to 84-year-olds exceeded the thresholds, 9.8million of them healthy and with no history of heart attacks or strokes, the same study found.

THE CONCERNS

SOME GPs are concerned about ‘medicalising’ so many people, especially when some complain of side-effects such as muscle pain and mental fogginess (although many experts claim side-effects are rare).

A review of 300 trials carried out since 1990 and published in The Lancet in 2016 concluded that prescribing statins to people who hadn’t previously had a heart attack or stroke prevented 80,000 heart attacks and strokes a year in the UK, and that the benefits far outweighed any harm from side-effects.

However, critics such as Dr Malcom Kendrick, a GP in Cumbria and author of A Statin Nation: Damaging Millions In A Brave New Post-Health World, maintains their benefits have been overhyped and the side-effects are underestimated.

‘There has not been one positive statin randomised controlled trial since 2005 — all the studies are just “data dredges” going back over old research and looking for positive associations,’ he says.

An analysis by Dr Kendrick of the landmark 2002 Heart Protection Study which concluded that taking statins saves 50,000 lives a year revealed that ‘if you took statins for five years after having a heart attack, it would extend your life by only 4.2 days; and if you were healthy and took a statin for five years it would lengthen your life by 3.1 days.

‘The people saying statins don’t cause many side-effects are not clinicians. They are not seeing people complaining about muscle pain like I am.’

The West of Scotland Coronary Prevention Study found that 25 per cent of people on statins had stopped taking them within five years.

Dr Kendrick said the latest study on statins published in the Annals of Internal Medicine is further proof that they are being overprescribed: ‘Is it worth taking