Independent statins review panel

Background

In October 2013 The BMJ published an article by John Abramson and colleagues that questioned the evidence behind new proposals to extend the routine use of statins to people at low risk of cardiovascular disease. Abramson et al set out to reanalyse data from the Cholesterol Treatment Trialists (CTT) Collaboration. Their contention was that the benefits of statins in people at low risk were less than has been claimed and the risks greater.

In their conclusion and in a summary box, they said that side effects of statins occur in 18-20% of people. This figure was repeated in another article, by Aseem Malhotra, that was published in The BMJ in the same week. The BMJ and the authors of both articles were made aware that this is incorrect, and corrections were published, withdrawing these statements.

The corrections explain that, although the 18-20% figure was based on statements in the referenced observational study by Zhang et al—which said that "the rate of reported statin related events to statins was nearly 18%,” the articles in The BMJ did not reflect necessary caveats and did not take sufficient account of the uncontrolled nature of the data of Zhang et al.

The BMJ was alerted to the error by Rory Collins, professor of medicine and epidemiology in Oxford and head of the CTT Collaboration, whose data were reanalysed by Abramson et al. Collins called for the retraction of both articles.

As explained in an editorial published alongside the two corrections, The BMJ's editor in chief, Fiona Godlee, decided to pass the decision on whether to retract one or both of the articles to an independent panel. The panel's membership and terms of reference are given below, as is a link to its final report, which was also published as an article in The BMJ. We have also provided a timeline of the events surrounding this episode.

Independent panel

The members and terms of reference of the panel

The report

The final report of the panel, plus supporting documentation

The response from The BMJ

The journal's response to the report of the panel and the results of an internal critical event audit conducted by the journal's staff

Timeline of events