Cholesterol and Statins
Cholesterol drug ezetimibe appears to do more harm than good, screening for ovarian cancer doesn’t work, and vitamin D linked with reduced risk of infection. For RSS feeds, click on http://www.podcastmachine.com/podcasts/8966 and then the ‘RSS feeds’ button to the right. For help regarding the playing, downloading and subscribing of the podcasts, click here.
Cholesterol and Statins
Cholesterol is said to cause heart disease (I’m not so sure, myself), and a mainstay of treatment here is a class of drugs known as ‘statins’ that reduce the rate at which cholesterol is manufactured in the liver. Statins have been used in medicine for over 20 years, but more recently has seen the development […]
Cholesterol and Statins
‘Healthy’ sterols can damage the heart, raised overall blood sugar levels linked with increased risk of death, British Medical Journal reminds of the importance of setting health policy based on all the evidence.
Brain and Behaviour
Alzheimer’s disease (a form of dementia) is characterized by the build-up in the brain of a protein known as ‘amyloid-beta’. Not surprisingly, amyloid-beta has been ‘targeted’ by drug companies, including Eli Lilli who produced the drug Semagacestat which did a nice job of retarding amyloid-beta synthesis. However, in trials, Semagacestat accelerated decline in brain function […]
Cholesterol and Statins
Generally speaking, doctors have almost unbridled enthusiasm for cholesterol-reducing drugs including statins. We doctors have generally been educated to believe that cholesterol at essentially normal levels causes heart disease, and bringing levels down is of paramount importance to health. Here in the UK, doctors are even remunerated by the Government to get their patients’ cholesterol […]
Brain and Behaviour
We’ll probably all be familiar with the idea that raised cholesterol levels cause heart disease. The idea here is that high levels of cholesterol cause fatty deposits on the inside of the arteries around the heart. If one or more of vessels should block off completely, the heart muscle is starved of blood and, if […]
Cholesterol and Statins
Statins reduce cholesterol-levels and have the ability to reduce heart disease risk. However, some researchers have asked if the primary mode of action of statins is cholesterol reduction. After all, statins have several effects in the body which might reduce the risk of heart disease in ways that have essentially nothing to do with cholesterol. […]
Cholesterol and Statins
My blog on Monday focused on a piece published in the American Journal of Public Health which detailed some of the tactics drug companies use to persuade doctors to prescribe their wares. The conclusion? The more aggressively a drug is marketed to doctors, the more suspicious of it we should be, basically. I ended the […]
Cholesterol and Statins
I came across this story this morning. It concerns the fact that there are plans afoot in the US to label meat products with nutritional information including calorie counts, levels of fat and specifically (and inevitably), saturated fat content. According to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, “More and more, busy American families want nutrition information that […]
Cholesterol and Statins
Big cholesterol news emerged last week on the publication (much publicised) of a massive meta-analysis of statin treatment in those at relatively high risk of cardiovascular disease. The idea of this meta-analysis was to assess whether aggressive lowering of cholesterol (specifically LDL-cholesterol) brings additional benefits in terms of cardiovascular disease protection. The meta-analysis included results […]