A study found that not only do cholesterol-lowering statin drugs fail to help patients with severe diabetes, but statins may also double their risk of experiencing a deadly stroke.
Lipitor Doesn't Work any Better Than Placebos
The study, led by Dr. Cristoph Wanner at the University of Wurzburg, Germany, was conducted on severely ill diabetics, and tested relatively low doses of the statin drug Lipitor against dummy pills.
At the end of the four-year study, the patients who took Lipitor showed virtually no difference from those who took the placebos in terms of the combined risks of heart attacks, strokes and death.
Stroke Risk Doubled
However, when fatal strokes were looked at individually, more than twice as many patients died on Lipitor (27) as died on the placebo (13).
Lipitor is currently the most commonly prescribed drug in the world.
New England Journal of Medicine July 21, 2005; 353:238-248
MedPage Today July 20, 2005