http://www.redflagsweekly.com/extra/2003_jul15.html

EXTRA!

July 15, 2003

GETTING BOOTED FROM A DRUG INDUSTRY-SUPPORTED WEBSITE

By Eddie Vos

Vos@health-heart.org

Theheart.org, a large cardiology site that receives sponsorship from the drug industry, is generally a well-regarded source of information for health-care professionals. The editorial board lists 85 doctors in 19 countries. Three of the eight editors, including the editor-in-chief, have declared they own stock options in the website’s parent company.

I am not an MD, but I run health-heart.org, one of the top "heart disease" sites (focusing on nutrition, health and heart disease: cause and prevention) you will find via Google. I also have four references to my name in the medical search engine, Medline. As such, I was granted access to the content of theheart.org and to its Forum, a kind of chat room. Ordinary people looking for heart disease, drug and device information regrettably are denied access to this site.

I contributed for some time to the Forum where doctors and other interested parties discuss problems and strategies. I pointed out things such as the benefits of omega-3 oils in the prevention of fatal irregular heart beat in a heart attack (and there is medical unanimity about this). Other points I raised were about the potentially enormous benefits of having low levels of a "blood toxin" we all have, an amino acid called homocysteine. Again, there is unanimity that the only treatment is a multiple-vitamin with high-dose B vitamins. So far so good.

My troubles started when I pointed out that cholesterol pills of the statin family (Lipitor, Zocor, Mevacor, Lescol, Pravachol, Crestor and the withdrawn Baycol) have nasty side-effects, such as faint or massive muscle pain, and that they have not been shown to prolong life in ordinary high-risk people, and may even cause cancer.

Let me explain: Statins are crow-bars in your cell machinery making a fundamental chemical called mevalonate. This chemical contributes to the production of about 2 grams of cholesterol your body needs each day for hormones, cell and brain function and digestive bile-acids. Moreover, other vital stuff made from mevalonate is also no longer made in the same (sufficient) quantities when statins are ingested. This list is very long and it includes the likely anti-cancer agent squalene and the vital anti-oxidant and energy producer CoQ10. Not enough CoQ10 and your heart, brain and nerve cells can die from lack of energy or they can mutate from lack of DNA protection.

The problem is that statin drugs lower your CoQ10 (one of the things that makes your "bad" LDL-cholesterol particle remain beneficial) as they do LDL. Blood is like homogenized milk; all the fatty stuff travels in little balls. While CoQ10 keeps it healthy, you can damage LDL and make it "bad" by having these droplets transport trans-fats, homocysteine or oxidized cholesterol from, for example, dried egg or milk powder.

If, for example, Lipitor, the world’s largest selling drug, lowers LDL by 40%, it also likely reduces your CoQ10, potentially resulting in muscle pain. For instance, a Canadian (but amazingly, not American) drug ads warn this CoQ10 reduction produced by statins may be harmful in heart failure (if not cancer as well). A large Italian study was conclusive about the huge benefit of supplemented CoQ10 in heart failure, eclipsing the action of any existing drug. Such supplementation may well resolve statin-produced muscle or joint pain.

My situation at theheart.org Forum appears to have become more problematic when I pointed out that the three large statin trials in high-risk people published in the last eight months did not prove to be life-saving. These trials are referred to as PROSPER, ALLHAT and ASCOT. After a combined 45,000 patient-years on statins, there was indeed some heart disease benefit in two of the three trials but, here’s the kicker: the any-cause mortality was within about 0.1% of those swallowing over 15 million dummy pills (Go to point 21 in this document for full links and data)

Now, realize that you or the system spends about U.S.$1000 per year to be on a statin, and that the PROSPER trial found significantly more cancer in the statin group and that there are at least 3 reasons (squalene, CoQ10 and angiogenesis) why that might make biological sense.

Now let’s get back to the fiasco at the Forum. Suddenly, one and then two of my postings on these issues disappeared and the editor at theheart.org sent me an e-mail, asking me to refrain from repeating my attacks on statins and the statin trials. He said the site welcomed a diversity of opinion, but contributors who repeated the same message in a number of different ways needed to be limited.

But then when I posted a critical reply to a person who I felt repeatedly argued in favor of the benefits of statins, and in this case, a newly approved statin, Crestor, I got booted from the Forum.

This particular statin can lower LDL by 65 %, and presumably will reduce CoQ10 as well - yet CoQ10 levels were not measured in Crestor

And so it happened. Information and access pulled. How often and how systematically is negative trial data cleansed from the pages of the health web sites that are trusted by many doctors?

Cardiologists, much like car mechanics [CARdiologists], need clean data and theheart.org certainly provides a great deal of information about drugs and devices in terms of "standards of care." But often this information is really about "standards of repair." Both doctors and mechanics are very useful in fixing damaged piping or replacing parts, but neither is very schooled in resolving the underlying problem of rusted or deposit-filled piping or arteries. Prevention, that is. One may by-pass or mechanically expand a local artery blockage but all agree, this is only symptom relief, not life extension. This is because the underlying processes continue.

Clearly, heart disease and other blood circulation conditions are not drug deficiency diseases as they are made to appear in some promotions and the science is solid that they may be caused, to a large extent, by low omega-3 and B-vitamin intakes and for which no prescriptions are needed. The fatty "blocking type" deposits in arteries appear to be unique to low-nutrient intake humans as this phenomenon is not described in free-living animals.

Mortality data is surprisingly hard to find in most statin studies. For example, the doubled mortality in the statin groups in the now 12-year old EXCEL study was so well hidden, that I might bet your MD could not find it. Similarly, the latest Lipitor studies were stopped while reporting cardiovascular benefit, yet clearly before they would potentially reconfirm a zero all-cause mortality benefit, or establish harm from CoQ10 lowering and from cancer.

Doctors need sound and varied information to make important judgments in order to fix and prevent. The way to a cardiologist’s heart, I know, is via the studies they should have read and may have missed. Medical web sites suppressing information and access can cause harm to the profession and to patients.