Crestor is okay for healthy people–now the comedy begins

Brace for Impact

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to put your hands together for the comedy stylings of drug giant AstraZeneca.

Personally, I can’t wait. I believe we’re in for some classic unintentional humor–the type of hysterical doublespeak that drug company advertising has elevated to an art form.

You may recall that the FDA recently approved the use of Crestor (AstraZeneca’s statin drug) for healthy people with no cholesterol problems if they’re men over the age of 50, women over the age of 60, if they have one risk factor (such as smoking), and if a blood test shows elevated inflammation.

An estimated 6.5 million people in the U.S. meet all those criteria, instantly making them candidates to take Crestor for the rest of their lives.

So any day now, we’ll begin seeing the new advertising campaign that will attempt to sell this cholesterol-lowering drug to people with normal cholesterol levels.

I can’t wait!

Will they go with whimsical cartoon characters? Or will they go for the touching slice of life scene, maybe a son convincing his mother to use the drug “for the grandkids”? Or maybe they’ll try a celebrity spokesperson–someone like Tom Hanks saying, “I’m healthy, I have normal cholesterol, so my doctor recommended, Crestor.”

Whatever it is, it’s going to be good.

How to wrangle your doctor

The ads will soon be running, the buzz will be out there– so what do those 6.5 million people say when their doctors strongly recommend a lifetime regimen of Crestor?

Actually, this one is pretty easy.

Here’s a can’t-miss Three Point Plan for steering your doctor away from the Crestor topic and putting the matter to rest once and for all.

Point One: Crunch some numbers

When your doctor tells you that a Crestor study with healthy subjects just like you reduced heart attack risk by 55 percent, you’re not going to blink. Because the numbers are all on your side:

• Out of about 8,900 subjects who took Crestor for two years, 31 subjects had heart attacks
• Out of about the same number of placebo subjects, 68 had heart attacks
• Sure, that’s a 55 percent “relative” difference between the two groups, but here’s how the math REALLY boils down: To avoid a single heart attack, 500 people have to take Crestor for a year A cardiologist summed it up for the New York Times: “The benefit is vanishingly small.”

Point Two: You can’t ignore this serious, deal-breaking side effect

In the Crestor study, subjects who took the drug were more likely to develop type 2 diabetes. And in a previous e-mail I told you about research that looked at the results of 13 large statin trials. Results showed that for every 225 subjects treated with statins for four years, one would develop type 2 diabetes.

Point Three: Another deal-breaker

One doctor told ABC News that about one in 10 statin users experience muscle pain and weakness. And recent research shows that the pain is actually a symptom of muscle damage.

Why would a healthy person put himself at such risk for a “vanishingly small” protection against heart attack and other cardio events?

Your doctor will be hard pressed to answer that one.

To Your Good Health,

Jenny Thompson

Sources:
“Risks Seen in Cholesterol Drug Use in Healthy People” Duff Wilson, New York Times, 3/31/10, nytimes.com
“Rosuvastatin to Prevent Vascular Events in Men and Women with Elevated C-Reactive Protein” New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 359, No. 21, 11/20/08, content.nejm.org
“FDA Panel Recommendation on Crestor Spurs Debate” Dan Childs and Peggy Peck, ABC News, 12/16/09, abcnews.go.com