statins

Article

statins is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between May 31, 2023 and May 10, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “Some of our favorite medications, including statins”; “Statins are also cheap and well tolerated”. It most often appears alongside “Most Drugs Are Bad For You”, 1123581321, anticholinergics.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: May 31, 2023
  • Last seen: May 10, 2024

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

May 31, 2023 · Original source
Some of our favorite medications, including statins, anticholinergics, and bisphosphonates, don’t reach the 0.50 level. And many more, including triptans, benzodiazepines (!), and Ritalin (!!) don’t reach 0.875.
May 10, 2024 · Original source
Several facts help make sense of this large effect. First, patients stop taking drugs that are both ‘high-value,’ and suspected to cause life-threatening withdrawal syndromes when stopped. Second, using machine learning, we identify patients at the highest risk of drug-preventable adverse events. Contrary to the predictions of standard economic models, high-risk patients (e.g., those most likely to have a heart attack) cut back more than low-risk patients on exactly those drugs that would benefit them the most (e.g., statins). Finally, patients appear unaware of these risks. In a survey of 65-year-olds, only one-third believe that stopping their drugs for up to a month could have any serious consequences. We conclude that, far from curbing waste, cost-sharing is itself highly inefficient, resulting in missed opportunities to buy health at very low cost (⁠$11,321 per life-year).
Don't statins pretty neatly bust Hanson's claim?
Heart disease is a top killer. The NNT_5 for the absolute lowest risk group on statins is 400.