Recent flaws in Evidence Based Medicine: statin effects in primary prevention and consequences of suspending the treatment.

Abstract

Statin therapy is presented as a protection against ischemic heart disease (IHD) complications. As IHD is often a fatal disease, statins are thereby supposed to decrease cardiovascular mortality and increase life expectancy. However, these benefits are increasingly challenged in the medical community, the controversy being particularly intense when discussing the effects of statins in primary prevention and the consequences of statin discontinuation. Both primary prevention and treatment discontinuation have been recently used by investigators linked to the pharmaceutical industry to justify and boost prescription and consumption of statins and other cholesterol-lowering medications. We herein review some recent commercial data related to primary prevention with rosuvastatin and statin discontinuation and their respective effects on IHD and overall mortality rate. We conclude that (1) despite the recent hype raised by HOPE-3, the cholesterol-lowering rosuvastatin is likely not beneficial in intermediate-risk individuals without cardiovascular disease (primary prevention). This trial may even represent a typical example of how evidence-based medicine has been flawed in commercial studies. (2) Statin discontinuation does not lead to increased IHD and overall mortality, at least in the months following interruption of treatment. On the contrary, one might even conclude that statin discontinuation could save lives. One possible explanation of this apparently paradoxical finding is that statin discontinuers, in the same time they stop statin therapy, likely try to adopt a healthy lifestyle. Further studies are needed to confirm the real effects of statin discontinuation in various clinical conditions. In the meantime, it is not evidence based to claim that statin discontinuation increases mortality or saves lives.