Placebo Update

Wow, after posting those pictures and now blogging twice about my cholesterol medicine, I believe I am really closing in on old fartdom. Still, I know that a significant part of the family blog readership (and those thousands of faithful lurkers) want to know what the scoop is on Vytorin. In short, my doctor said that it got a bad rap in the press, and that things are a lot more unclear in the study. She forwarded the NEJM paper to me, so I got the pleasure of trying to decipher it on my own.

In conclusion, the reduction of LDL cholesterol by the addition of ezetimibe to simvastatin did not reduce intima–media thickness of the carotid-artery wall in patients with familial hypercholesterolemia in our study. The reason for the failure to observe an incremental effect on intima–media thickness despite a reduction in levels of LDL cholesterol remains unknown.

The article speculates as to why the plaque-like crap in the arteries was not reduced when the LDL cholesterol was reduced, but they don't know. They also don't know if the LDL cholesterol reduction could be an indicator that things are actually better in spite of the results. Nor do they know if it had something to do with the specifics of the people they looked at, most of whom were already on statins. So, I guess I'll stick with the stuff, which is what my doctor recommended. Otherwise I get to switch to a statin only, and increase the dosage.

You know, if you lived your life by what you could read in the New England Journal of Medicine, your life would be shorter just because of the erratic behavior that would result.