A chara, – As a preventive cardiologist I think your recent article on cholesterol (Health+Family, October 31st) was misguided and has the potential to cause real harm.
The role of LDL-cholesterol as causal in cardiovascular disease is unequivocal – we know this from the wealth of high quality scientific data from observational studies in humans, experimental studies of atherosclerosis in animals, monogenic and polygenic associations in humans, and randomised trials of LDL cholesterol-lowering therapy.
Over the past 20 years since I started in cardiology statins have transformed the management of cardiovascular disease. For the most part it is now a manageable long term condition – in conjunction with leading a healthy lifestyle.
It is also complete nonsense that statins cause confusion and memory loss – in fact statins have recently been shown to be associated with improved sleep quality. The same study affirms that the vast majority of side-effects from statins are due to the nocebo effect (a negative belief concerning a medical treatment that produces a detrimental effect on a person’s health for purely psychological or psychosomatic reasons).
The media need to be aware of their power and use it more wisely – a recent Danish study directly linked negative news stories on statins with drug discontinuation and death.
I hope those living with heart disease in Ireland don’t make the same mistake. – Yours, etc,
Dr SUSAN CONNOLLY,
Consultant Cardiologist,
South West Acute Hospital,
Western Health and Social
Care Trust,
Enniskillen,
Co Fermanagh.