If you are a post-menopausal woman with high cholesterol, your doctor will almost certainly recommend cholesterol-lowering medication or statins. And it just might kill you. A new study in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that statins increase the risk of getting diabetes by 71 percent in post-menopausal women. Since diabetes is a major cause of heart disease, this study calls into question current recommendations and guidelines from most professional medical associations and physicians. The recommendation for women to take statins to prevent heart attacks (called primary prevention) may do more harm than good.
Statins have been proven to prevent second heart attacks, but not first heart attacks. Take it if you already have had one, but beware if your doctor recommends it for you if have never had a heart attack.
This current study adds to an increasing body of literature questioning the benefits of statins, while highlighting their potential risks.
New Study Shows 48 Percent Risk of Diabetes in Women Who Take Statins
This study examined the data from the large government sponsored study called the Women's Health Initiative, the same study that disabused us of the idea that Premarin prevented heart attacks in postmenopausal women.
In fact, based on this randomized controlled trial, estrogen replacement therapy, once considered the gold standard of medical care for the prevention of heart disease, was relegated to the trash bin of history joining medicine's many other fallen heroes including DES, Thalidomide, Vioxx, Avandia and more.
In this new study researchers reviewed the effect of statin prescriptions in a group of 153,840 women without diabetes and with an average age of 63.2 years. About 7 percent of women reported taking statin medication between 1993 and 1996. Today there are many, many more women taking statin medications, thus many more are at risk from harm from statins.
