Statins and the diet-heart hypothesis

On 4 September, NHS Chief Executive Simon Stevens announced that high-dose statins could be available from high street pharmacies as part of the NHS Long-Term Plan to cut heart disease and stroke (NHS England, 2019). According to NHS England (2019), it is clear that statins ‘have been shown to be effective, with minimal side-effects, and even a small reduction in cholesterol from these drugs is able to save lives’. This report cites British Heart Foundation-funded research presented at the recent European Society of Cardiology Conference in Paris, which showed ‘that the benefits of statins are potentially even higher than previously reported’. Following an NHS England and Improvement review, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) will rule on the proposal.

But the day before NHS England's announcement, the British Medical Journal reported that Norman Lamb MP, Chair of the parliamentary Science and Technology Committee, had asked the Department of Health and Social Care to conduct an independent review of the evidence on the effectiveness of statins and their possible side-effects (Mahase, 2019).