cathyinto

I've not exactly been a wall flower wrt to drug companies promoting the relative risk improvement of statins. What's funny, is they quote relative risk improvements but quote absolute risk side effects. For example, HPS quotes a 25% risk reduction in CHD event for statin users, which is a relative risk reduction. Absolute risk reduction is approximately 1.5%.

I discovered a chart for the side effect breakdown of Alanine Aminotransferase(AA) and Creatinine Kinase(CK)

AA 2-4x Upper limit - 5.5% increased risk
AA >4X Upper limit - 35.5% increased risk
CK 2-4x Upper limit - 46.2% increased risk
CK >4x Upper limit - 83.3% increased risk.

I would love to see the breakdown of all the side effects, because there has been a claim the actual side effect numbers are skewed into small catagories and if the percentage is low enough, it can be discounted. While these data are individually small, on an individual basis, collectively they begin to add up. The claim that the CHD improvement of 177 over five years with 20,500+ patients is significant, so are these side effect numbers.

It is disengenious to quote relative numbers, when it makes your product look good and absolute numbers when it makes your product look bad. The more information I find on statin drugs, the scarier it becomes.

If I'm missing something here, please let me know where the analysis comparing absolute v relative risk reduction is flawed.