There's already resistance to the study findings.
The study considered the presence of irritation, and not the cholesterol level itself. People with acceptable cholesterol levels do have heart attacks and strokes.
So this study supports the contention that irritation is far more significant than cholesterol as a predictor/cause. So cholesterol may lose its place as a public enemy.
Also, lifestyle changes were not a significant part of the treatment with statins. The Doctor-controlled life was implicitly found ineffective.
So what this study does is identify a cause for deadly diseases and cure it. Doctors in their disappointment that the result was not the one favored have been rushing to deny what is being reported to them.
This is an issue to watch closely. The Doctor who sentences you to a diet of overcooked brussels sprouts and sends you to be contorted by bone-breaking machines may also be denying you the treatment which could prevent a damaging, perhaps fatal disease.
Turns out statins are not just about the cholesterol count.
It’s also about a protein called C-reactive Protein or CRP. (Right, sport. The CRP in your blood.)
It’s a common protein in plasma, and it deals with inflammation throughout the body. (CRP illustration from Wikimedia.)
Many people with low cholesterol have heart attacks anyway, and a drug trial known as JUPITER, bankrolled by a statin maker, found that reducing CRP levels actually cut risks of a stroke or other other coronary event by half.
The 17,802 people studied were in middle-age, had LDL levels under 130, and a high-sensitivity CRP level of 2.0 mg. per liter or more. Half got the statin, in this case Crestor or rosuvastatin, half got a placebo. The study was due to last five years.
JUPITER was stopped after one year because the numbers were so stark and it was concluded that withholding the statin from the placebo group was ethically unfair.
The study leader, Dr. Paul Ridker, wrote that if this screening and treatment regimen became normal practice it could save 250,000 lives per year.
The NEJM is now soliciting comments, through November 26, from physicians on whether these results will change their practice.
You can demand the change yourself by using this simple request. Check the CRP in my blood and take it down, doc. It’s the new statin dance that’s going to be sweeping the country clubs.
