Do Women with High Cholesterol Need Medication to Prevent Heart Disease?

You may have read that heart disease is under diagnosed in women, and that they are missing potential treatments that could save their lives. For instance, in the May 10, 2004, edition of Newsweek, it was reported that heart disease is a "grave threat to women's health, but no one needs to take it lying down. Statin drugs (Zocor, Lipitor, Pravachol and others) can slash a woman's heart-attack risk by more than a third-just as they do in men... should you be taking one of these medications?" The answer is-probably not. In a study that combined all of the available information on women from the different clinical trials, the authors found no reduction in heart attacks or mortality in women with high cholesterol who did not have a history of heart disease.

That means that if you are a woman with high cholesterol who does not have a history of heart disease, you should not take a statin. But what if my cholesterol is elevated? You might ask. Just because your cholesterol is high, and statins reduce it, doesn't mean it will prevent heart attacks or death. As seen in the ALL-HAT study, LDL cholesterol came down with statins, but there was no reduction in mortality.

At this time there is no evidence that statins save the lives of women even f they have a history of heart disease. For women who are post-menopausal with heart disease, although the Heart Protection Study showed a reduction in heart attacks (with no reduction in mortality), more studies, including ASCOT, LIPID, and PROSPER, did not show any benefit. The 4S study found a 12% increase in overall mortality for women, even though there was a 24% reduction in heart disease related mortality. The CARE study showed a 12 fold increase in breast cancer in women, which may explain the increased overall mortality in spite of the reduced cardiac mortality. For women without heart disease (even with risk factors) there is no proven benefit to taking statins. Bottom line? If you are a woman and you don't have a history of heart disease and you don't have a condition known as familial hypercholesterolemia, you won't get any benefit from taking a statin.

Author Resource:- J. Douglas Bremner, MD, is a researcher and physician and author of 'Before You Take That Pill: Why the Drug Industry May be Bad for Your Health: Risks and Side Effects You Won't Find on the Label of Commonly Prescribed Drugs, Vitamins and Supplements.' http://www.beforeyoutakethatpill.com

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