E-drug: Therapeutics Letter #48
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I would like to bring to your attention the April/June 2003 issue (#48)
of the Therapeutics Letter: "Do Statins have a Role in Primary
Prevention?" that has just been published on the Therapeutics
Initiative web-site at http://www.ti.ubc.ca/pages/letter48.htm
In this Letter we reviewed the evidence from statin trials to determine
what is the overall health impact when statins are prescribed for
primary prevention.
Based on the best available evidence we concluded that:
* If cardiovascular serious adverse events are viewed in isolation, 71
primary prevention patients with cardiovascular risk factors have to
be treated with a statin for 3 to 5 years to prevent one myocardial
infarction or stroke.
* This cardiovascular benefit is not reflected in 2 measures of overall
health impact, total mortality and total serious adverse events.
Therefore, statins have not been shown to provide an overall
health benefit in primary prevention trials.
I invite you to drop by and have a look at this Letter. Please feel free
to forward this message to any of your friends or colleagues that
might be interested in this topic.
Please note that the next issue of the Therapeutics Letter (#49),
scheduled to be published later this summer, will review the evidence
from statin trials to determine what is the benefit associated with
titrating the dose of statin to achieve target lipid levels.
We would appreciate receiving your comments on this Therapeutics
Letter and its possible implications in clinical practice.
Best regards,
Ciprian Jauca
Program Coordinator
Therapeutics Initiative
University of British Columbia
Department of Pharmacology & Therapeutics
2176 Health Sciences Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z3
Canada
Tel: +1-604-822-0700
Fax: +1-604-822-0701
Email: jauca@ti.ubc.ca
Web: www.ti.ubc.ca
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