Data, Drugs, and Deception: a True Story
May 25, 2012 Last week The Lancet published a meta-analysis of 27 statin trials, an attempt to determine whether patients with no history of heart problems benefit from the drugs—true story. The topic is controversial, and no less than six conflicting meta-analyses have been performed—also a true story. But last week’s study claims to show, once and for all, that for these very low risk patients, statins save lives—true story.
Actual true story: the conclusions of this study are neither novel nor valid.
The Lancet meta-analysis, authored by the Cholesterol Treatment Trialists group, examines individual patient data from 27 statin studies. Their findings disagree with an analysis published in 2010 in the Archives of Internal Medicine, and with analyses from two equally respected publications, the Therapeutics Letter and the Cochrane Collaboration.* Despite this history of dueling data the authors of last week’s meta-analysis, in a remarkable break from scientific decorum, conclude their report with a directive for the writers of statin guidelines: the drugs should be broadly recommended based on the new analysis.
As an editorialist points out, if implemented, the CTT group recommendations in the United States would lead to 64 million people, more than half of the population over the age of 35, being started on statin therapy—true story.
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http://smartem.org/content/data-drugs-and-deception-true-story