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Letters Long term statin treatment

Exaggerated report of benefits in a flawed long term statin treatment study

BMJ 2017; 359 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.j4915 (Published 31 October 2017) Cite this as: BMJ 2017;359:j4915
  1. David Diamond, professor1,
  2. Malcolm Kendrick, general practitioner2,
  3. Luca Mascitelli, army medical corps officer and cardiologist3
  1. 1Departments of Psychology, Molecular Pharmacology and Physiology, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida 33647, USA
  2. 2East Cheshire Trust, Macclesfield District General Hospital, Macclesfield, UK
  3. 3Medical Service, Comando Brigata Alpina “Julia”/Multinational Land Force, Udine, Italy
  1. ddiamond{at}usf.edu

The BMJ reports on the findings of a study on long term (20 year) treatment with a statin in the WOSCOPS trial by Vallejo-Vaz et al.12 The news article and publication report that, in this primary prevention trial, pravastatin reduced deaths from heart disease by 28% in men with high levels of LDL cholesterol. But 28% …

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