There is no doubt in the medical community that when it comes to bad cholesterol (LDL) levels the drugs called statins save lives. Statins lower bad cholesterol levels and are highly effective at reducing the possibilities of heart attack and stroke.
Studies have proved that patients at high risk had their risk reduced in direct proportion to the lowering of their LDL levels. This suggests that the more a high-risk patient reduces their bad cholesterol, the better chance they have of avoiding stroke, heart attack, or a related incident.
Now, further studies suggest that it would be wise to treat patients in the high-risk group, those who have already experienced a stroke, heart attack, or have diabetes, with even stronger statins. The study concluded that the introduction of stronger statins into the treatment of high-risk patients protected an additional four people per one hundred from having a stroke or heart attack.
The British government has had an ongoing battle with GPs and pharmacists over the use of generic statins until recently.
The government recently gave up on its efforts to convince doctors and pharmacists to substitute generic statins for brand names when data was shown to clearly prove that the generics often contained a lower statin dose and therefore did not reduce LDL levels as well as they should in the patients who accepted substitution. This put those patients at higher risk for dire consequences.
Doctors warn that the test results suggesting stronger statin use are restricted to high-risk patients. There are lower risk patients who are treated with statins as well, probably several million, and there is no evidence to suggest that they would somehow benefit from stronger statin doses.
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