Tuesday

190319

Crestor, by Jove... or Not

Dr. Nortin Hadler, emeritus professor of medicine and microbiology/immunology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and former attending rheumatologist at UNC Hospitals, reviews the AstraZeneca-funded JUPITER trial of Crestor (the pharma company’s statin or cholesterol-lowering drug), particularly its claim that there is “unequivocal evidence” of the drug’s effectiveness. In this 2008 article, Hadler concludes, “I'd have to treat a hundred or more people with Crestor for a year to spare one of them a cardiovascular event that they would not have otherwise had. I'd have to treat several hundred for a year to spare one a heart attack, and perhaps hundreds more to spare one a stroke. I am unwilling to even suggest a life-saving benefit. …the reduction of 56 percent may be hard to ignore, but it calls for reflection rather than prescribing zeal. It is a reduction in a very small outcome to an even smaller outcome.”

Read the articleCrestor, by Jove... or Not