Under the new guidelines to GP's all patients over 75 are being given statins to prevent them having heart attacks or strokes, especially if they suffer from dIabetes, have hypertension or suffer from heart disease. The question that needs to be answered is, does this prolong their lives?
Answer is I'm afraid-NO. A study with over 5000 patients were either given a statin or nothing at all to reduce their cholesterol and then followed up for several years. Overrall the statins did prevent some heart attacks over this period but to do this 48 patients needed to be treated to prevent a heart attack. What was worse was that this only applied to men and not women ie. women taking these drugs had no benefit whatsoever.
What is even more depressing is that both groups lived the same amount of time ie. the statins did not increase your life expectancy. Finally even more depressing was the fact that those taking the statins died of cancer more than those not taking the statins. This does not mean that the statins gave you cancer, although this is not ruled out, but that instead of having your heart attack and dying you developed cancer instead and died. | 
