Statin use vs. death rate from cardiovascular diseases (2019)

Statin use vs. death rate from cardiovascular diseases (2019)(ourworldindata.org)

9 points by js2 3 hours ago | 1 comment

ggm 2 hours ago |

A remarkably strong signal to my naieve eyes. These drugs appear to do what they claim.

Most people I know in my age group 65+ who take them complain of minor issues like biliousness. Most of us grumble about something. If I owned a lawn I would ask you to get off it. I wouldn't blame the statins for that: I don't take 'em, I got a clean calcium score. Reading I see there is a paradoxical increase in hard calcium deposits for some statin takers, but presumably it stabilises and stroke risk drops regardless. Or maybe not regardless or paradoxical: maybe this is how statins do the beneficial thing?

alejohausner 1 hour ago | |

I see quite the opposite. On the left side of the plot, for countries with the lowest cvd rates, there is a whole range of dosages for statins. In other words, countries with low and high statin usage have low death rates from cardiovascular disease.

ggm 50 minutes ago | | |

Diet & lifestyle? Leftmost Low statin has some high fish intake high veg diet. But probably not low salt. Far right has some high salt, high smoking rate econs. I selected AU, NZ and UK to compare as high health budget, high statin use. average Western diet to AR,UY which have good health systems, meat dominated, lower statin and see a weaker but present horizontal separation.

Maybe I'm being to optimistic about the signal. I do tend to a default position of belief in western medical science consensus and it tends to "take statins if old" according to "big statin" funded pop science at least.