Crestor: A Life Saver?
My MD put me on 20 mg Crestor over a year ago. My cholesterol at the time was about 220 with a bad ratio of bad and good cholesterol. Within nine months, my cholesterol was down to 100 with a much improved ratio. He now has me split the pills and take only 10 mg a day. I'm a believer.
People with low cholesterol and no big risk for heart disease dramatically lowered their chances of dying or having a heart attack if they took the cholesterol pill Crestor, a large study found.
The results, reported Sunday at an American Heart Association conference, were hailed as a watershed event in heart disease prevention. Doctors said the study might lead millions of more people, as many as 7 million more in the U.S. alone, to consider taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, sold as Crestor, Lipitor, Zocor or in generic form. [CBS]
These drugs are great for people who can't control their cholesterol any other way, but highly cost-ineffective for anyone else. RE the NYT article:The study sample is small, relative to the target group of 400 million people world-wide and 2 years in a study tells you nothing about long-term effects. I'm suspicious that this study (sponsored by the makers of Crestor) is just another way to peddle drugs to people who don't really need them in order to pad the bottom line. I actually wrote a post about this yesterday after I saw the article.
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I'm skeptical of drug companies and their power. I questioned my MD at length about Crestor before I agreed to try it. My insurance company forced us to jump through hoops and made him prescribe Lipitor first and provide lab results to justify Crestor. The Lipitor lowered my cholesterol but only the good cholesterol.
ReplyDeleteMy MD has chronic high cholesterol and is just in his early 40s and has been taking Crestor for several years. He said that it was the only drug that gave him good results.
The long-term effects for me are probably not great since I am 61 and long-term may mean at best 20 years. I am more apt to die from heart disease if I don't take the drug than I am from liver disease or other side-effects. My dad died at 60 from a heart attack and my brother died in his 50s from a heart attack following lung cancer surgery.
I agree as a whole, people should not rush to get Crestor but should consider it carefully depending on their risk factors.
Couldn't agree more. It's a godsend for some folks, but I resent the way stuff is pushed on many of us who don't need it through dodgy studies. What gets me is that this is being sold as cutting your "risk of death." I hate to break toto people, but it's going to happen, no matter what. Later is certainly better (I'd like to have you around for quite a while longer; I've gotten hardly any wear out of you!), but there's no possibility of it not ever happening.
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