Category: Latest Cholesterol News
Praluent: New Cholesterol Drugs Get Riskier By The Day
Big Pharma seems intent in sticking to its backward way of thinking when it comes to cholesterol. So far their efforts, to create a drug that can prevent heart disease failed miserably. Fortunately, many people have cottoned onto the fact that lowering cholesterol to ridiculously low levels with drugs is a bad idea because it […]
When Doctors Stop Taking Statin Drugs
You know something is wrong when six in 10 GPs opposed the proposal to lower the risk level at which patients are prescribed cholesterol-lowering statin drugs. It gets even worse when 55 per cent of doctors said they would not take statins drugs themselves or recommend them to a relative. If that doesn’t speak volumes, […]
Mainstream In A Divided Camp About Statins
Recently, I wrote about Professor Sir Rory Collins, who tried to get the British Medical Journal (BMJ) to retract two papers that were faintly critical of cholesterol-lowering statins. A committee convened by the BMJ to look into this matter found there were no grounds for retraction. This episode centred around the claims made in the […]
Evidence Turns Common Cholesterol Assumptions On Their Head
Cholesterol in the bloodstream is carried within protein-rich packages known as ‘lipoproteins’. These come in two main types, so-called ‘low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol’ (LDL-C) and ‘high-density lipoprotein-cholesterol’ (HDL-C). Conventional wisdom has it that LDL-C is responsible for dumping cholesterol on the inside of arteries, and is dubbed ‘bad cholesterol’ as a result. On the other hand, HDL-cholesterol […]
Statins: Pro-statin Doctors Go On The Offensive
I reported recently that a group of doctors, some quite prominent, had expressed concerns about the mooted expansion of the prescription of cholesterol-lowering statins, in the UK. They wrote a letter, reported widely in the press, in which they detailed six major objections to the plan, including the mass-medicalization of millions of healthy individuals, the […]
Little support for calls to retract BMJ articles on statin side effects
I have written recently about a brouhaha stoked by one Professor Sir Rory Collins. It concerns two articles published in the BMJ last year which stated that side effects from statins were around the 20 per cent mark. The claims were genuinely misleading, and Rory Collins brought this to the attention of the BMJ. The […]
Doctors Speak Out Against Plans To Make Statins More Widely Available
As I’ve suggested before, doctors and researchers can have wildly different views on statins. Some maintain these drugs are ‘highly effective’ and very safe. Others (who bother to look objectively at the research) tell us that statins only help a small minority of people who take them, and have potential harms that are real but […]
Low Cholesterol Levels Could Leave You Vulnerable To Infection
While we are frequently warned about the perils of cholesterol, it should be borne in mind that cholesterol is an essential constituent of the body and a basic building block in several structures and substances including cell walls, key hormones and vitamin D. Another function that cholesterol appears to fulfil concerns immunity and protect against […]
Recent Comments