You will soon have role playing cards available for your doctor's visits. The conversation is scripted with four questions and the answers as to whether or not you should be on a statin. Two can play, but millions will have a chance of their very own!
The pocket cards are intended to empower patients to determine whether they should or should not take a statin. Statins are cholesterol lowering drugs that supposedly reduce the risk of heart attack. Diabetics are typically at a higher risk for heart attack. The card includes answers to four questions: (1) What is your risk of having a heart attack in 10 years? (2) What are the benefits of taking statins as compared to not taking statins? (3) What side effects can you expect from statins? (4) What do you want to do now?
If the risk of having a heart attack is very small, a pill that reduces that risk may not be worth it, but if the risk is really high, lifestyle changes (or a pill) might sound compelling. Once a patient has a sense of the potential dangers and benefits they can make an informed choice. I hope the cards come equipped with the source of the funding for this study: Mayo Clinic and the American Diabetes Association. I wonder if that's the underhanded way to say this study was funded by Merck, Pfizer, and GSK?
1. The risk for Cardiomyopathy in Diabetes is very high and occurs soon after a diagnosis is made.
While I am all for a non-dependence on medication if possible, in this case the risk far outweigh the benefit.
In an article appearing in ACS' Biochemistry, May 29, 2007 "Alterations in Myocardial Cardiolipin Content and Composition Occur at the Very Earliest Stages of Diabetes: A Shotgun Lipidomics Study"
"Dramatic" losses of a key biochemical substance in heart muscle tissue occur in the very earliest stages of diabetes induced in laboratory mice, according to a new study. Xianlin Han and colleagues did the study as part of a broader medical effort to understand diabetic cardiomyopathy. Heart abnormalities are the relatively common complication of diabetes and account for much of the increased mortality from heart disease in patients with diabetes.
The researchers used a powerful new technology termed "shotgun lipidomics" to show that hearts of diabetic mice lose large amounts of cardiolipin (CL), fatty materials essential for the heart's production of the energy needed for normal contraction. The changes, which involved a loss of CL followed by changes in the remaining CL, occurred as early as 5 days after rats became diabetic.
Posted at 9:42PM on May 29th 2007 by BetterCell