One of my favorite researchers, Chris Masterjohn, has just launched a new blog called “The Daily Lipid” where he writes about fats, cholesterol and health. Chris is pursuing a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology and is one of the most knowledgeable contemporary writers on cardiovascular health that I’m aware of. With his permission, I am cross-posting the first two articles on his blog – which you should definitely consider adding to your blogroll!
Statins for pregnant women?
Statin manufacturers, the sycophantic researchers they pay, and the shameless hucksters who sell them are always up to no good, but their recent attempts to market them to pregnant women are simply horrifying.According to a recent news article published in Mail online, researchers from liverpool believe that taking statins during pregnancy might help women avoid caesarean sections by promoting more robust uterine contraction. They hope to begin human trials in three to five years.
Somehow, the author of this article failed to react with the shock and horror appropriate to the situation — which should be the same shock and horror with which we would react to the suggestion that pregnant women should take thalidomide to avoid morning sickness.
Back in 2004, a report in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that the use of statins in the first trimester of pregnancy was associated with birth defects, especially severe central nervous system defects and limb deformities. In fact, 20 out of 52 women exposed to statins gave birth to offspring with such defects, which represents a birth defect rate of 38 percent, nearly 20 times the background rate of birth defects!
Even before this report was published, researchers already knew that statins caused birth defects in animal experiments, and the FDA already required the drugs to carry a label warning pregnant women to stay away from them. The article linked to above stated the following:
“FDA took this action because it was recognized that fetal cholesterol synthesis was essential for development, and because animals given statins during pregnancy had offspring with a variety of birth defects,” [one of the study's authors] said.
Less than a year later, Merck and Johnson & Johnson jointly asked the FDA for permission to market an over-the-counter statin. One of the concerns about the proposal was the risk to pregnant women. USA Today reported:
The FDA classifies Mevacor and other statins as pregnancy category X, which means they are not supposed to be taken by pregnant women. Not only have category X drugs been linked to fetal abnormalities in animal or human studies, but the FDA also has declared that the benefits of taking them do not outweigh potential risks.
According to the same article, Merck made a disturbing admission:
“Of course, there will be women who take it off-label,” acknowledges Merck executive Edwin Hemwall, referring to the use of non-prescription Mevacor by women under 55.
And what could prompt women to use statins during pregnancy against recommendations? Certainly a news article declaring that statins might prevent the need for caesarean sections and their associated complications could prompt some women to do so.
So what ground-breaking research made these Liverpool researchers so confident that taking drugs associated with twenty times the normal rate of major birth defects during pregnancy might be a good idea that they put out a press release declaring this confidence to the public before any trials were even under way?
Well, according to the article:
Tests have already shown that raising levels of cholesterol interferes with womb tissue’s ability to contract.
Really. Raising levels of cholesterol. You might wonder how they accomplished that. Did they use cholesterol-raising drugs? I don’t know of any drugs that do that. Did they use egg yolks, or the dreaded dietary villain — gasp — saturated fats?
No, the story is quite different.
The apparent basis for this ridiculous statin cheerleading is a 2004 study published by researchers from the University of Liverpool in the American Journal of Physiology — Cell Physiology entitled “Increased cholesterol decreases uterine activity: functional effects of cholesterol alteration in pregnant rat myometrium.”
Rather than feeding anything to pregnant women or pregnant rats, the researchers took pregnant rats and killed them. So the first thing we can say is that statins might help you deliver a baby if your doctor kills you first.
Then they extracted the uterine tissue and either extracted cholesterol from it with a chemical solvent called methyl beta-cyclodextrin, or enriched it either with cholesterol mixed with this solvent or with LDL (which they didn’t measure for oxidation prior to use). Then they added drugs to induce contraction under either cholesterol-depleted or cholesterol-enriched conditions, and found that contraction was greater under cholesterol-depleted conditions.
So now we know that — wait, what is it we know?
Well, quite clearly, we don’t know anything that we can have any confidence has any physiological relevance at all. That is, except the fact that statins cause birth defects in animals, and they increase the rate of birth defects in humans by nearly twenty times, primarily by causing severe defects of the central nervous system and limb deformities.
To add to that, we also know that the vast majority of humans conceived with Smith-Lemli-Opitz Syndrome (SLOS), a genetic inability to synthesize enough cholesterol, die of spontaneous abortion in the first 16 weeks of gestation. Those who live long enough to be born suffer from mental retardation, autism, facial and skeletal malformations, visual dysfunctions and failure to thrive.
Statins for pregnant women? I don’t think so.
Article written by Chris Masterjohn
Statins for 8-year old children?
The American Academy of Pediatrics recently announced new recommendations for giving cholesterol-lowering drugs to children as young as eight years old. They also recommend giving low-fat milk to infants as young as one year old.
The New York Times published several articles on this, first announcing the recommendation the day the academy made it, then describing the backlash of saner doctors and other members of the public against it, and finally editorializing that while they were first “appalled” at the recommendation, after reading the report they were more dismayed at the state of our children’s health.
Concerning this frightful state of children’s health, the Times reported the following:
“We are in an epidemic,” said Dr. Jatinder Bhatia, a member of the academy’s nutrition committee who is a professor and chief of neonatology at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. “The risk of giving statins at a lower age is less than the benefit you’re going to get out of it.”
Dr. Bhatia said that although there was not “a whole lot” of data on pediatric use of cholesterol-lowering drugs, recent research showed that the drugs were generally safe for children.
An epidemic of what? High cholesterol? Not according to the academy’s report, which states that cholesterol levels in children declined between 1966 and 1994 and stayed the same between 1994 and 2000.
No, we are in an epidemic of obesity. As the Times reported:
But proponents say there is growing evidence that the first signs of heart disease show up in childhood, and with 30 percent of the nation’s children overweight or obese, many doctors fear that a rash of early heart attacks and diabetes is on the horizon as these children grow up.
Is there any evidence that statins lead to weight loss? If there is, I am not aware of it.
The point is immaterial, because the academy doesn’t claim to have any evidence for its position in the first place. For example, its report states the following:
Also, data supporting a particular level of childhood cholesterol that predicts risk of adult CVD do not exist, which makes the prospect of a firm evidence-based recommendation for cholesterol screening for children elusive.
And further down:
It is difficult to develop an evidence-based approach for the specific age at which pharmacologic treatment should be implemented. . . . It is not known whether there is an age at which development of the atherosclerotic process is accelerated.
In other words, they don’t know what level of cholesterol is risky and at what age it starts posing a risk, but they will nevertheless assume that there is some level that does start to pose a risk at some age and they will thus have to make a guess just what that level and what that age is.
The report discusses evidence that the “metabolic syndrome” and the “recent epidemic of childhood obesity” are tied to the risk of diabetes and heart disease and evidence that even modest weight loss at a level of five to seven percent is sufficient to prevent diabetes. Yet somehow instead of making a recommendation about how to more effectively lose weight the authors derive from this data a much less logical but much more profitable conclusion that 8-year-olds should be put on statins.
As to the recommendation to feed infants low-fat milk, the Times reported the following:
The academy also now recommends giving children low-fat milk after 12 months if a doctor is concerned about future weight problems. Although children need fat for brain development, the group says that because children often consume so much fat, low-fat milk is now appropriate.
This is rather remarkable, because the academy attributed the drop in childhood cholesterol levels to the successes of the anti-fat, anti-cholesterol campaign that began in the 1950s. But now children no longer need milkfat because they are getting plenty of fat. Well which is it? Are they getting more fat now or less fat?
Of course milkfat is also a source of choline, along with liver and egg yolks, which is essential to brain development.
But even this misses the point. Cholesterol is essential to brain development!
One of the first articles I added to my section on the functions of cholesterol was an article entitled “Learning, Your Memory, and Cholesterol.” It discusses the evidence uncovered eight years ago that cholesterol is the limiting factor for the formation of synapses, which are the connections between neurons that allow learning and memory to take place.
Lowering brain levels of cholesterol can be detrimental at any age beacause of this, but the consequences for children — whose brains are still developing at a much more rapid rate — could be much more dire.
No doubt, most researchers and medical doctors mean well and are honestly trying to help our children. But surely someone in these drug companies must know that cholesterol is necessary for brain development, and that cholesterol-lowering drugs reduce mental performance in adults. Surely they must know that if we raise our next generation of children on statins during the critical periods of brain development, we may raise a whole generation with compromised intelligence.
And if that’s the case, are they trying to dumb us down? Sometimes it seems like that’s the case.
Article written by Chris Masterjohn
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Read the complete article here.
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