Should You Take A Statin?

Dr John Abramson, who has published several peer reviewed papers examining the data behind statins, discusses the facts you need to know before deciding with your doctor whether to take one of these drugs or not.

Statins are drugs that lower cholesterol levels and the numbers of people recommended to take them continues to increase. Just this year, the UK’s National Institute of Clinical Excellence, NICE, has extended its recommendations to suggest that those with a less than 10% 10 year risk of heart disease consider taking one.

Yet interestingly, the vast majority of the clinical trial data had been collected ten years ago. So the podcast explores the basis on which these new recommendations are being made.

Dr Abramson discusses the risks and benefits of statins, which will vary depending on if you are male or female, and if you are at high or low risk from heart disease.  

And just to note, in this podcast we talk about US and UK recommendations, but both are based on the same clinical trial data,  which countries across the world rely on.

The key difference is the US measures cholesterol levels in milligrammes per decilitre and the UK in millimoles per litre. (To convert milligrams per decilitre to millimoles per litre divide by 18 and there are also various calculators online that can convert from one system to the other too.)

The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director.  You can follow Liz on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at https://liztucker.substack.com

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