Category Archives: Dr Malcolm Kendrick

I am a GP living in Macclesfield, having graduated from Aberdeen medical school many moons ago. This blog is my best effort at providing some balance to the increasingly strident healthcare lobby that seems intent on scaring everyone about almost everything. Is there a foodstuff that is safe to eat anymore? Is there any activity that does not cause cancer or heart disease? Sausages…..get thee behind me Satan.

Please sign

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I just got this as an e-mail this morning.

Friends,

I’ve just heard that companies like Coca-Cola, Nestle and others will be able to claim their products are ‘healthier’ thanks to a new EU regulation on using fructose. But consuming high levels of fructose is a leading cause of obesity around the world.

This decision was made by the EU Food Standards Agency in Parma, Italy. We need to push back on food industry lobbying by demanding the EU Food Standards Agency thinks again.

Can you sign this petition demanding the EU Food Standards Agency thinks again?

http://action.sumofus.org/a/eu-fructose/

So, now, it will be claimed that Coca-Cola is a health food. You really couldn’t make this stuff up, could you? Or if you did you would be accusing of stretching credibility far beyond breaking point.

Anyway, if you feel you can, I would hope that you can sign this petition. It takes about thirty seconds.

For those of you who sometimes feel that big business is now running the world, whilst Governments jerk up and down on their strings. ‘All citizens must now drink Coke for a healthy and fulfilling life…’

“In a way, the world−view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.”  1984

Please protect the community

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The primary functions of government are to maintain order, settle conflicts, and protect the community. So I am told.

Generally I am a small state man. In fact I refer to myself, when I don’t think anyone important is listening, as an anarchist. I believe that humans should be allowed as much freedom as is possible, without being allowed to seriously harm others. Rules and regulations and bureaucracy are not really my thing. So I am achingly reluctant to demand that the State gets involved in creating yet another agency, or add to its powers in any way.

But sometimes the State must intervene to carry out one of its three primary functions. Namely, to ‘protect the community.’

Where Governments around the world have to step in, right now, is to gain proper control of the creation of medical guidelines. Something that they have spectacularly failed to do, up to now.

As you may be aware, a row is rumbling under the surface about European guidelines on the use of beta-blockers in surgical operations, guidelines that were based on corrupt research. Doctors following these guidelines have probably killed 800,000 people. Give or take.

Some people have written into this blog stating that the numbers cannot be that high, and that the calculations are probably wrong. They were not my calculations, I hasten to add. My view on this is that many many thousands have certainly died unnecessarily. It doesn’t really matter if it was one hundred thousand, five hundred thousand, or eight hundred thousand.

How many would be acceptable?

The answer is, of course, none. But when guidelines go wrong the potential for killing hundreds, thousands, or even millions, is always there. If, for example, your guidelines state that fifty per cent of the population must take a drug for a condition, and these guidelines are wrong, you can kill millions,.

Recently, I did the back of a fag packet calculation on the number of people who were killed by the advice that patients must be managed with six weeks of strict bed rest after a heart attack. Here is some advice from that era: ‘The patient is to be guarded by day and night nursing and helped in every way to avoid voluntary movement, or effort.’ Thomas Lewis.

According to my figures, and I am not going into them here, strict bed rest for six weeks after a heart attack killed fifteen million people worldwide. Yes, fifteen million. More than died in the fighting in the first and second world wars added together.

This, I hope, gives you some idea of the potential death toll when medical guidance goes wrong. Given this, you would hope that the process that leads to the creation of guidelines would be checked, and double checked, then triple checked, then monitored.

You would also hope that the evidence underpinning the guidelines was free from bias, and corruption. Furthermore, that all data – positive or negative – would be freely available, with no possibility of hiding anything away. You would also hope that those creating the guidelines had no possible conflicts of interest.

The fact is that NONE of these things are true. We have a system that is almost perfectly free from scrutiny of any sort. Many, if not most, guidelines are based on trials that are designed, set up and run by the pharmaceutical companies. They own and control the data, and are under no obligation to let anyone else see it, if they don’t want to. Negative data are regularly buried, never to see the light of day.

A few brave souls e.g. Ben Goldacre, Fiona Godlee (editor of the BMJ), and Peter Gotzsche have been demanding that all clinical trial data are made available for scrutiny, but almost nothing has happened. Currently Roche are refusing to release data on their flu drug Tamiflu. Various studies remain unpublished, no data released. The UK Govt. seems powerless to act. Or maybe it just doesn’t want to, with so much money at stake.

Last year AbbVie and InterMune, two drug companies, took legal action against the European Medicines Agency to stop them releasing any data from clinical studies, and to ensure that no trials data could made available, anywhere, to anyone, ever again. I like to think I helped to kick this monstrous and terrible legal action into touch. But, companies still do everything in their power to ensure that data will not, ever, be released.

Then we have the enormous problem that that ‘experts’ chosen to write guidelines work hand in glove with the pharmaceutical industry. The US guidelines on cholesterol lowering written in 2004 were put together by nine people. Here is a conflict of interest statement. I have put this up before, but I think it bears almost endless repetition:

ATP III Update 2004:  Financial Disclosure

Dr. Cleeman: (Chairman) has no financial relationships to disclose.

Dr. Grundy: has received honoraria from Merck, Pfizer, Sankyo, Bayer, Merck/Schering-Plough, Kos, Abbott, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and AstraZeneca; he has received research grants from Merck, Abbott, and Glaxo Smith Kline.

Dr. Bairey Merz: has received lecture honoraria from Pfizer, Merck, and Kos; she has served as a consultant for Pfizer, Bayer, and EHC (Merck); she has received unrestricted institutional grants for Continuing Medical Education from Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Novartis, Wyeth, AstraZeneca, and Bristol-Myers Squibb Medical Imaging; she has received a research grant from Merck; she has stock in Boston Scientific, IVAX, Eli Lilly, Medtronic, Johnson & Johnson, SCIPIE Insurance, ATS Medical, and Biosite.

Dr. Brewer: has received honoraria from AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Lipid Sciences, Merck, Merck/Schering-Plough, Fournier, Tularik, Esperion, and Novartis; he has served as a consultant for AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Lipid Sciences, Merck, Merck/Schering-Plough, Fournier, Tularik, Sankyo, and Novartis.

Dr. Clark: has received honoraria for educational presentations from Abbott, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck, and Pfizer; he has received grant/research support from Abbott, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck, and Pfizer.

Dr. Hunninghake: has received honoraria for consulting and speakers bureau from AstraZeneca, Merck, Merck/Schering-Plough, and Pfizer, and for consulting from Kos; he has received research grants from AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Kos, Merck, Merck/Schering-Plough, Novartis, and Pfizer.

Dr. Pasternak: has served as a speaker for Pfizer, Merck, Merck/Schering-Plough, Takeda, Kos, BMS-Sanofi, and Novartis; he has served as a consultant for Merck, Merck/Schering-Plough, Sanofi, Pfizer Health Solutions, Johnson & Johnson-Merck, and AstraZeneca.

Dr. Smith: has received institutional research support from Merck; he has stock in Medtronic and Johnson & Johnson.

Dr. Stone: has received honoraria for educational lectures from Abbott, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Kos, Merck, Merck/Schering-Plough, Novartis, Pfizer, Reliant, and Sankyo; he has served as a consultant for Abbott, Merck, Merck/Schering-Plough, Pfizer, and Reliant.

http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/cholesterol/atp3upd04_disclose.htm

Those companies that I have marked in bold sell (or at the time sold) statins and/or other cholesterol lowering medications. A mere eight members (the chairman was employed by the NIH who was not allowed close ties with industry), and we have almost seventy direct financial conflicts of interest with companies who made, and sold, cholesterol lowering agents.

How we can possibly allow doctors with enormous financial conflicts of interest to create guidelines that will be followed around that world, and will affect hundreds of millions (in this case billions) of people….How can this possibly be allowed.

We currently have a system of guideline creation that relies on three things being true, if they are to be sare – all three things:

1: That the clinical trial data are not corrupt, or biased

2: That negative data are made available when requested

3: That the medical experts tasked with creating the guidelines are completely unaffected by their financial conflicts of interest

The fact is that none of these critical requirements are followed….even remotely.

How many other guidelines out there are wrong, damagingly wrong, and horrifyingly wrong? How many millions of people are being put at risk by a system that is wide open to corruption, and bias? I have not the slightest idea, but I suspect many….

The public are most certainly not being protected. We have put the foxes in charge of the chicken coop, with entirely predictable results. Time for the farmer to pull out the shotgun and start blasting away. Time for the state to start doing what it is there to do. Namely, ‘protect the public.’

Guidelines kill 800,000

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A few days ago a friend sent me this headline by e-mail.

‘Guideline Based on Discredited Research May Have Caused 800,000 Deaths In Europe Over The Last 5 Years.’

I would replace the word ‘May’ with these two words ‘almost certainly.’ You would think, would you not, that if any other event in the world, at any time, had killed eight hundred thousand people, this would be front page headlines around the world for weeks, probably months, maybe even years.

Governments would spring into action, those guilty dragged into court. Thousands would protest in the streets, petitions would be signed, laws passed.

The reality is, I am willing to bet, that you have never even heard of this gigantic scandal. It will not have appeared in any national television programme, or newspaper. The blogosphere is also, almost totally silent.

Eight hundred thousand people. Please let that figure sink in for a few moments. If you dropped a major thermonuclear device on Manchester (UK) and killed every single living person, this would be roughly equivalent. If you laid the corpses end to end, the line of dead people would stretch from John O Groats to Land’s End (the entire length of the UK). Walking briskly each day, it would take you two months to pass them.

Think on that.

To an extent the actual guidelines themselves are not the most important thing here. They are now in the process of being changed (although they have not yet been changed). Nobody can be brought back to life, those who could have died – are dead. The issue here is that the processes leading to the creation of guidelines, that have almost certainly killed 800,000 people, are still in place, with no prospect of any change.

Those who have read this blog may be aware of my distaste for medical guidelines, and my concerns about their impact. I wrote an earlier blog called ‘Who shall guard the guardians.’ This outlined some of the problems, but even I was overwhelmed by the sheer scale of deaths involved when guidelines go wrong. I could have worked it out, but never did.

Guidelines are based on evidence, and evidence is based on clinical trials. And major clinical trials are, almost without exception, paid for, run, and controlled by the pharmaceutical industry. The great and good of medicine, the ‘Key Opinion Leaders’ KOLs, who put together the guidelines will almost all have very close connections with the industry. In some cases they will have been paid millions by pharmaceutical companies.

Whether they think so, or not, these opinion leaders are biased. Biased in favour of pharmaceutical products that are promoted through biased research, and launched on an unsuspecting world. And there is no-one out there to check what these KOLs and guideline committees are doing. If, to pluck a name from the air, the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) decides to create a guideline committee, how do they do it?

They choose a chairman, who will be on one of their committees. A well regarded, sound chap, with expertise in the area. He, very rarely she, will then decide on which of his friends and colleagues would be most suitable to be committee members.

They will have a few meetings, gather the evidence together, decide on what best practice should be, and produce their guidelines. No other organisation checks on them, or their decision making, or their conflicts of interest. Or, indeed, the evidence itself.

Yet, when the guidelines come out, many countries will slavishly follow them. They will form the basis for instructions to their medical services. Doctors who fail to follow the guidelines can be censured, or lose their jobs. They virtually carry the force of law.

Something this powerful and important and critical to medical care is dealt with in an almost completely cavalier fashion. Which is, frankly, inexcusable.

I suppose you are wondering what these guidelines were? Well, they were on the use of beta-blockers to protect the heart during surgery. To see more on this story go to the Forbes website

I cannot send you to the article published in the European Heart Journal, because one hour after going up on their website, it was pulled. Here is the comment from the authors of this paper, Graham Cole and Darrel Francis, on the decision of the Editor to disappear the article.

‘Our article is a narrative of events with a timeline figure and a context figure. We had not considered it to contain scientific statements, but we admit that it does multiply together three published numbers.

It is not an analysis of individual trials considering design, molecule, dose and regimen. We published last year the formal meta-analysis under stringent peer review in Heart and addressed the questions, including dosing, in that paper and associated correspondence.

The first of our two EHJ articles merely says that our community, which races to take credit when research-led therapy improves survival, must be equally attentive to the possibility of harm.  The leverage of leadership means the magnitude of either may be far from trivial.

Where our article relayed numbers, we made clear that alternative values were possible. The focus for readers was on how serious the consequences can be when clinical research goes wrong.

We thank Prof Lüscher for highlighting the scientifically important point that the pivotal trial, DECREASE I, has not been retracted by NEJM because the investigative committee did not recommend this. Unfortunately the committee could not have done so, because DECREASE I was outside its brief, displayed on the first text page of the first committee report. Can readers suggest why DECREASE I, from the same trial family, was exempted from inquiry?

We admire Prof Lüscher’s diligence in sending for peer review what we thought was merely multiplication. We await the review of the pair of articles. The first narrated one instance of a pervasive problem. The second suggests what each of us can do to reduce recurrences.

We respect the process Prof Lüscher has set in motion. We ask readers to join with us, and the journal, in maximizing the reliability of clinical science for the benefit of patients.’

Well, I am really glad that this article is being sent for peer review, because – as we know – peer review is a jolly good thing. To quote Richard Horton, Editor of the Lancet:

‘The mistake, of course, is to have thought that peer review was any more than a crude means of discovering the acceptability — not the validity — of a new finding. Editors and scientists alike insist on the pivotal importance of peer review. We portray peer review to the public as a quasi-sacred process that helps to make science our most objective truth teller. But we know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong.’

Let me just repeat that last bit. Peer-review is:

….biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong.

Frankly, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for peer-review on this matter.

I suppose you may also be wondering how the problem with these guidelines came to light. Well, it turns out that the chairman of the guidelines committee was Prof Don Poldermans. A man who has now been booted out of his job at Erasmus Hospital in the Netherlands for making up his research. The very research that was used to create these guidelines.

Don Polderman’s also had financial conflicts of interest with Merck, Pfizer, Novartis and Medtronic. To name but four. (One conflict of interest statement can been seen here).

Anyway, here is a summary of what has happened:

      • Don Poldermans had financial conflicts of interest with several pharmaceutical companies
      • Con Poldermans carried out corrupt research, supporting the use of pharmaceutical products
      • Don Poldermans was the chairman of an ESC committee that recommended widespread use of drugs to protect the heart during surgery
      • Widespread use of drugs to protect the heart during surgery has killed 800,000 people over 5 years in Europe (alone)
      • The paper outlining the scale of deaths has been pulled by the ESC

I hope the hell there are no more Don Poldermans out there…..but you would have to be a brave man to think so. Personally, I believe there is an endemic problem with bias and corruption in medical research, and we should be very afraid indeed.

How to kill a hypothesis

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“Why do people insist on defending their ideas and opinions with such ferocity, as if defending honour itself? What could be easier to change than an idea?” J.G. Farrell.

When the orbit of Neptune was found to be irregular, and not to follow classical Newtonian physics, it was suggested that, perhaps, the laws of physics may break down in deep space. Others, rather more pragmatically, suggested that there was another planet out there, interfering with the orbit of Neptune. It was just too far out, and dim, to be seen.

That planet, no longer called a planet, was Pluto. Once observed, it accounted for the distortions in the orbit of Neptune.

When the orbit of Mercury was found to be irregular, and not to follow classical Newtonian physics, it was suggested that there was another invisible planet orbiting closer to the sun. This planet was named Vulcan.

Of course there was no planet Vulcan. The reason why classical Newtonian physics did not accurately predict the orbit of Mercury is because the mass of the sun bent time and space. Classical Newtonian physics had to be replaced by Einstein’s theory of relativity.

What does this tell us?

It tells us that it is very difficult to know if an apparently contradictory observation actually refutes a scientific theory. It also tells us that you can use ad-hoc hypotheses (there is another planet out there) to support a cherished central hypothesis, and that this is a valid scientific technique.

But at what point do you have to admit defeat? How many contradictory observations can you dismiss before you must accept that the game is up, and that your hypothesis is wrong?

I think about this a lot. Mainly with regard to the cholesterol hypothesis, or the diet-heart hypothesis, or whatever term is now current. I have seen evidence that directly refutes this hypothesis again and again and again and….indeed…again.

If anyone wishes to debate this issue with me, I can produce far more evidence contradicting it, than supporting it. Yet still it stands, untouched. In fact I would suggest more people believe in this hypothesis than at any time in human history. Billions of people also take statins to lower their cholesterol levels. As you can imagine, this is more than a little frustrating.

How can you convince people that this hypothesis is wrong? I have tried in many, many, different ways. As have other members of THINCS (The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics).

Yes, I have helped to convince many thousands of people that cholesterol has nothing to do with heart disease, or cardiovascular disease, or atherosclerosis, or unstable atherosclerotic plaques…

Indeed, stepping sideways for a moment, one of the major difficulties in this area is that the terminology shifts and swirls in front of you, making it impossible even to pin down what you are talking about.

At one time the experts were quite happy to tell us that a raised cholesterol level caused heart disease. Now we have ‘good’ cholesterol and ‘bad’ cholesterol, and ‘light and fluffy’ bad cholesterol and ‘small and dense’ bad cholesterol (which really should be called ‘evil’ cholesterol, I suppose). We have the ratio of good to bad cholesterol, apob-100 levels, particle numbers, sub-fractions of good cholesterol, dyslipidaemia, LDL particle size, or number,  or…..the list goes on and on.

How can you argue against a scientific hypothesis when the damned thing will not stay still from day to day?

That, however, is a bit of a side-issue, although I have come to realise that this constant creation of new types of cholesterol, and sub-fractions, and ratios, is all part of the game that is played to protect the cholesterol hypothesis from refutation. How can you refute a hypothesis that can change into any shape it likes? Answer, you can’t.

Anyway, in my efforts to work out how to change ideas in the wider population I have spent a great deal of time looking at the history of scientific thought. I wanted to gain any insights I could into how people managed to kill off hypotheses in the past.

As part of my education I have tried not to get too depressed by fellow thinkers on the subject. Such as Max Plank, who said:

‘A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.’

In short, his view is that you should forget trying to convince people. They will never, ever, change their minds. Max Plank, by the way, was the man who published Einstein’s special theory of relativity (against great opposition).

Another of my scientific heroes is Wilfred Trotter. A man you are unlikely to have come across. Unfortunately, however, he was not much help either:

‘The mind likes a strange idea as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with similar energy. It would not perhaps be too fanciful to say that a new idea is the most quickly acting antigen known to science. If we watch ourselves honestly we shall often find that we have begun to argue against a new idea even before it has been completely stated.’

I could fill hundreds of pages with quotes saying the same type of thing. Essentially, people love the ideas they have grown up with, and become deeply emotionally attached to them. Changing them is painful; they dislike and fear new ideas and, will bring forth all the powers of their intellect to do so.

Things are made all the more difficult when you try to convince people who have spent large amounts of their professional life studying a specific area. When someone has become an ‘expert’ in something, and their reputation, and position of authority, is inextricably linked to a certain hypothesis, you are not just attacking an idea, you are attacking them. As noted by Leo Tolstoy:

‘I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth, if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.’ Leo Tolstoy

Despite all of this being rather depressing, it has all helped me to establish one clear rule. Do not bother trying to convince people who are ‘experts’ in heart disease that the cholesterol hypothesis is wrong. It is a complete waste of time and energy. The only people who can be convinced are inquisitive people who do not have too much invested in this particular hypothesis.

I have also worked out another rule. Facts are almost completely ineffective at convincing people of anything. Recently, I was reading an article on Daniel Kahneman, Nobel prize winner in economics. He was discussing the irrationality of the financial system. He made many interesting points. For example:

‘The way scientists try to convince people is hopeless because they present evidence, figures, tables, arguments, and so on. But that’s not how to convince people. People aren’t convinced by arguments, they don’t believe conclusions because they believe in the arguments that they read in favour of them. They’re convinced because they read or hear the conclusions from people they trust. You trust someone and you believe what they say. That’s how ideas are communicated. The arguments come later.’

Once again, if this is true, what can be done? How to change ideas…..

I leave you at this point with a small section of dialogue from the film Inception:

Dom Cobb: ‘What is the most resilient parasite? A bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm?’

Arthur: ‘Uh, what Mr. Cobb is trying to…’

Dom Cobb: ‘An idea. Resilient, highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it’s almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed, fully understood. That sticks, right in there somewhere.’

[he points to his head]

The cholesterol hypothesis is one of the most resilient parasites of all. How to kill it off? All suggestions welcome.

Is medical research now beyond redemption?

55 Replies

Below, I have copied an entire article from the BMJ, written by Dr Des Spence, who is a fellow Scottish GP. We communicate from time to time, and share a general view that medicine is heading in a very unfortunate direction with overdiagnosis and over-treatment/polypharmacy becoming a massive problem.

This is driven, in the main part, by the pharmaceutical industry. An industry that would like to see the entire population of the world taking medication every day….. forever. To achieve this they have, effectively, grabbed hold of medical research and twisted it to their own ends.

Anyway, please read this article. It encapsulates much of what I feel, and I believe it needs a wider audience [I have added a few comments into the text to ensure that I am not breaching copyright]

Evidence based medicine (EBM) wrong footed the drug industry for a while in the 1990s. We could fend off the army of pharmaceutical representatives because often their promotional material was devoid of evidence. But the drug industry came to realise that EBM was an opportunity rather than a threat. Research, especially when published in a prestigious journal, was worth more than thousands of sales representatives. Today EBM is a loaded gun at clinicians’ heads. “You better do as the evidence says,” it hisses, leaving no room for discretion or judgment. EBM is now the problem, fuelling overdiagnosis and overtreatment.

[This is now a major problem for GPs who are increasingly measured and monitored, and funded, according to how accurately we follow guidelines mk comment]

You see, without so called “evidence” there is no seat at the guideline table. This is the fundamental “commissioning bias,” the elephant in the room, because the drug industry controls and funds most research. So the drug industry and EBM have set about legitimising illegitimate diagnoses and then widening drug indications, and now doctors can prescribe a pill for every ill.

[As you can imagine, this makes it difficult not to prescribe statins mk comment]

The billion prescriptions a year in England in 2012, up 66% in one decade, do not reflect a true increased burden of illness nor an ageing population, just polypharmacy supposedly based on evidence. The drug industry’s corporate mission is to make us all sick however well we feel. [Absolutely true mk comment] As for EBM screening programmes, these are the combine harvester of wellbeing, producing bails of overdiagnosis and misery.

Corruption in clinical research is sponsored by billion dollar marketing razzmatazz and promotion passed off as postgraduate education. By contrast, the disorganised protesters have but placards and a couple of felt tip pens to promote their message, and no one wants to listen to tiresome naysayers anyway.

[Speaking as a tiresome naysayer I could not agree more mk comment]

How many people care that the research pond is polluted, with fraud, sham diagnosis, short term data, poor regulation, surrogate ends, questionnaires that can’t be validated, and statistically significant but clinically irrelevant outcomes? Medical experts who should be providing oversight are on the take. Even the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and the Cochrane Collaboration do not exclude authors with conflicts of interest, who therefore have predetermined agendas. The current incarnation of EBM is corrupted, let down by academics and regulators alike. [If anyone has any suggestion how to improve regulation, please let me know mk comment]

What do we do? We must first recognise that we have a problem. Research should focus on what we don’t know. We should study the natural history of disease, research non-drug based interventions, question diagnostic criteria, tighten the definition of competing interests, and research the actual long term benefits of drugs while promoting intellectual scepticism. If we don’t tackle the flaws of EBM there will be a disaster, but I fear it will take a disaster before anyone will listen.

[There have already been many disasters, but nobody has yet listened mk comment]

Original article can be found here

Sorry about the intrusive comments, but I don’t want the BMJ jumping up and down on me – especially as they are the only major journal that seems keen to criticize the industry.

What Des Spence is saying, is what I have been saying for some time now. Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) could have been a great thing – so long as it was not enforced too rigidly. But the evidence has been manipulated and corrupted all the way along the line. EBM is now almost completely broken as a tool to help treat patients.

Some years ago I stated that I no longer believe in many research papers that I read. All I tend to do is look at the authors, look at the conflicts of interest, look at the companies who sponsored the study, and I know exactly what the research is going to say – before I have even read the paper.

I have also virtually given up on references. What is the point, when you can find a reference to support any point of view that you want to promote? Frankly, I do not know where the truth resides any more. I wish to use evidence, and the results of clinical studies, but I always fear that I am standing on quicksand when I do so.

We are at a crisis point. Medical research today (in areas where there is money to be made) is almost beyond redemption. If I had my way I would close down pubmed, burn all the journals, and start again, building up a solid database of facts that we can actually rely on – free from commercial bias. But this is never, ever, going to happen.

Happy New Year.

 

How to avoid dementia

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Most of us fear that we may develop dementia as we get older. I fear that I may have got it already, as my memory for names becomes even worse. One piece of good news is that, for around one third of people, it may be possible to prevent dementia simply by taking three forms of vitamin B. Vitamin B6, B12 and folic acid.

The research work on this was done at Oxford University, and was published earlier this year. I received a copy of the study about a month ago, and I read it with great interest. The key statements from the abstract are, as follows:

‘Our results shows that B-vitamin supplementation can slow the atrophy of specific brain regions that are a key component of the AD processes and that are associated with cognitive decline.

….we go further by demonstrating that B vitamin reduces, by as much as seven fold, the cerebral atrophy in those grey matter (GM) regions specifically vulnerable to the AD (Alzheimer’s Disease) process.’

Some of you may know that Jerome Burne blogged about this a while ago, which is what attracted my interest in the first place. It immediately fired me into instant action. Several weeks later I got hold of the full paper, which was published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It is entitled: ‘Preventing Alzheimer’s disease-related gray matter atrophy by B-vitamin treatment.’ Sorry to say that you have to pay to get the entire manuscript.

This study built on earlier work which also demonstrated a significant reduction in brain shrinkage using vitamin B(s) (at lower doses). The brain images themselves look particularly impressive, even to my untrained eye, with far less atrophy to see in the vitamin B treated group.

Unfortunately, this benefit only seems to be available those people who had a high level of homocysteine in their blood in the first place. A level found in about one third of the population.  For the other two thirds, taking vitamins does not seem to help.

Why do vitamin B(s) have this beneficial effect in this group?  Well, it has been known for a long time that people with high homocysteine levels are more prone to developing dementia. It is also known that B-vitamins lower the level of homocysteine the blood (look up Wikipedia if you want more detail on this complex area). However, just because a high level of homocysteine is found in people with dementia, does not mean that it truly is cause. It may be an innocent bystander. An association, rather than a cause.

However, the Oxford group, by lowering homocysteine and slowing brain atrophy, have gone a long way to prove that homocysteine does seem to be an actual cause of dementia. At least in about one third of people who have high levels in the first place. More importantly, the risk of dementia can be significantly reduced using a simple regime of B vitamins. A regime that appears to have no adverse effects – apart from a small degree of damage to the bank balance.

Why, you might ask, is no-one doing anything about this? Last week our glorious UK health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, announced that he was, sorry, we were, going to defeat dementia in twelve years’ time. Or some other such nonsense figure that he plucked from out of thin air. Did he mention research into vitamin B? No, he did not. Why not? Possibly because no-one made him aware of this research. Probably because he has no interest in dementia other than as a career enhancing, five minute, sound bite. He is such a busy, busy, man. Tomorrow he will be curing cancer. Sorry, we will be curing cancer.

A further important reason for the deafening silence in this area is because pharmaceutical companies cannot make money out of vitamins. Vitamins cannot be patented; therefore any profit margin is far too puny to be of interest to them. Which means that there will be no funding from the pharmaceutical industry to support any further research into B vitamins.

Even worse, if vitamins do work to reduce dementia this will significantly erode any pharmaceutical industry profits to be made. In commercial parlance vitamins would be called – ‘the competition’.

‘And what do we do to ‘the competition’ boys and girls?’

‘We crush it sir?’

‘Yes, that’s right, we crush it like an insect under our boot, don’t we boys and girls. Using any means possible……lock and load.’

I am sure a few Grima Wormtongues, sorry pharmaceutical company lobbyists, have already been whispering in various ears, denigrating this vitamin B research. ‘Very preliminary, not very convincing, we need a new approach, you need to support us, the pharmaceutical industry, only we can find a cure…….my precious…..’

Trust in me, just in me
Shut your eyes and trust in me
You can sleep safe and sound
Knowing I am around
Slip into silent slumber
Sail on a silver mist
Slowly and surely your senses
Will cease to resist
Trust in me, just in me
Shut your eyes and trust in me

(Kaa, the python the Jungle Book)

Wake up, wake up!

Of course Vitamin B is not a miracle cure for all forms of Dementia. In fact it is not a cure – in any recognised sense of that word. All that vitamin B(s) can do is to significantly slow the process of brain shrinkage. Once you have lost brain tissue, it does not come back.

In addition, these vitamins only work in about a third of the population, and only for Alzheimer’s Disease.  There are other causes of dementia, and vitamin B compounds will have no effect on them, at all. However, right now, it looks like by far best thing we have got. In fact, it is the only thing we have got. Alzheimer’s meds can slightly improve symptoms, but have no impact on the underlying disease process.

On the other hand, for the sake of a relatively simple blood test, and spending a couple of hundred pounds (or dollars) on vitamins a year, or however much they actually cost you, this decision is a no-brainer (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun).

Indeed, it is such an obvious thing to do that I have started to offer the blood test at my own clinic. (Yes, I suppose this counts as a Disclosure of Interest). Mainly because no-one in the NHS is the slightest bit interested. So someone had to do it.

The daily doses of vitamin B in this study were:

20mg vitamin B6
500mcg vitamin B12
800mcg folic acid

These are considerably higher than the recommended daily allowance (RDA) for these vitamins. But the RDAs for almost all vitamins were established as a bare minimum, many years ago, using virtually zero evidence. They remain unchangeable by any means known to man. I call them the ‘ten vitamin commandments,’ which have been engraved upon stone.

Until a group of idiots…sorry experts, decides to study the benefits of various vitamins in greater depth, we are going to be stuck with RDAs that make no sense, and will certainly not help you to delay, or even prevent, dementia. Until then, get a blood test to check homocysteine levels. Providing, that is, you can find anyone to do it. Then, if it is high, take vitamin B(s).  They can do you no harm, but they could do you a hell of a lot of good. Which is my kind of preventative medicine.

You absolutely cannot be healthy any more – it’s official

81 Replies

I have been waiting for some time now before it became officially impossible to be healthy. In recent years the boundaries of health have been inexorably squeezed tighter and tighter. Recently, they snapped shut. The land of the healthy now no longer exists. Tis but a memory.

I wondered if it would be cholesterol that would obliterate health first, but it turned out to be blood pressure. This was pretty much second favourite in my book.

As with many areas of ‘health’ the definition of a healthy blood pressure has fallen and fallen. A few years ago we had go to the stage of a condition known as pre-hypertension. A state of having a high blood pressure that wasn’t really high, but represented an ill-defined danger of some sort. This pressure was set at 115/75mmHg. Far lower than the average blood pressure in the Western World.

However, with the latest CV prevention guidelines (yes, them again) we have managed to get the optimal systolic blood pressure down to 90mmHg. Underneath, you will see a little graph that I created using the CV risk tool. The tool can be downloaded here:

So you can check out for yourself that what I am saying is true.

CV event risk in next 10 years vs systolic BP

I put in figures for a healthy male, and then only changed the blood pressure level. As you can see, as the blood pressure goes up, the risk of a CV event goes up, and vice-versa. Going from 90mmHg to 150mmHg causes your risk to go up from 2.6% to 6.5%. A 250% increase in relative risk. What this tells us is that 90mHg represents the absolutely optimum blood pressure. Anything higher and your risk increases, and it increases quite steeply.

By definition, this means that a systolic blood pressure of 90mHg is ‘healthy’ and anything above this becomes increasingly ‘unhealthy.’ Now it has to be said that a systolic blood pressure of 90mmHg is low. Pretty damned low. Indeed, I have been asked to check patients out because their systolic BP was 90mmHg, and the nurse was rather worried about them.

I can hardly blame the nurse for this, because the definition of hypotension (dangerously blood pressure), is…yes, you guessed it, a systolic blood pressure of 90mmHg and lower. You can check this ‘fact’ on the National Institutes of Health site.

This means that we have reached a situation whereby a systolic blood pressure lower than 90mmHg increases risk; and a blood pressure higher than 90mmHg increases risk. I suppose you could say that anyone with a blood pressure of exactly 90mmHg is healthy, so the land of health still exists as a microscopically thin sliver of habitable area. But for all intents and purposes, health has gone.

Can it really be true that there is no such thing as a healthy blood pressure?

In order to believe this you have to believe in the linear or log-linear model. A model that can, to a major degree, be laid at the feet of a certain Jeremiah Stamler. He stated that ‘the relation of SBP (systolic blood pressure) to risk of death is continuous, graded, and strong, and there is no evidence of a threshold.’  In short, as BP goes down, risk goes down, and there is no lower limit beyond which this is not true. Well, until you reach 90mmHg, it seems.

This idea is based on mathematics, whereby Stamler took all the studies he could find, matched BP with risk, and then created his perfect curve. You can see how this type of thing is done by looking at a curve created by matching writing score vs. reading score. [I took this example from the internet1]. The dots may seem all over the place, but there is a trend from bottom left to top right.

The curve is a linear model, which smooths out all of the data variations. Excel spreadsheet will even calculate a curve like this for you, if you have a graph with dots which may seem completely random.

log_tr1

In the world of hypertension, the log-linear model rules.

‘This(the log linear model) is the paradigm for the relationship of all cardiovascular risks to blood pressure, and forms the foundation of the current guidelines for hypertension.’ These words from the European Heart Journal in the year 2000, since then the paradigm has not changed, and neither has the model. The latest CV guidelines are based on it.

How could it be otherwise? Do you really think anyone has done a study lowering blood pressure from 100mgHg to 90mmHg? If so, think again. In fact the model was first created from the Framingham study data. This is the world’s longest running, and most cited, study on cardiovascular disease. It has been running since 1948 in a town called, unsurprisingly, Framingham in the US.

Now, this would be all fine and jolly – if the model were actually correct.

In 1980 Ancel Keys, who is not my favourite ever person it must be said, looked at the Framingham data.  He concluded that the linear model, in terms of the relationship between overall and coronary heart disease was unjustified.

Twenty years after this, a group of statisticians from UCLA looked at the data again. And here is what they said:

‘Shockingly, we have found that the Framingham data in no way supported the current paradigm to which they gave birth. In fact, these data actually statistically reject the linear model. This fact has major consequences. Statistical theory now tells us that the paradigm MUST be false for the target population of the study.’2

Was this paper refuted? No, not exactly….

“The National Institutes of Health’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) issued a statement regarding Port’s findings saying that they found it “thought provoking” but “After careful review of this study, the NHLBI finds that it does not offer a basis for changing the current hypertension guidelines.”

End of.

Which means that we are here. A world where health was finally extinguished by using a mathematical model. A perfect world for the pharmaceutical industry. Everyone is ill, and all shall have medications, for ever.

‘Can you do Addition?’ the White Queen asked. ‘What’s one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Alice. ‘I lost count.’

 

1: http://goo.gl/ZlJ7tO

2: Port S. et al: ‘There is a non-linear relationship between mortality and blood pressure.’ European Heart Journal (2000) 21, 1635-1638

The most unpronounceable failure yet

57 Replies

Every day a billion things pop into my inbox, and I find my thought dragged this way and that. Mainly, what should I blog on next, and can I be bothered…..so much wine to be drunk.

However, I thought I should give everyone a quick head up on VARESPLADIB. This is the first and last time you are going to hear of this drug, so listen up. The first thing I would like to draw your attention to is the list of authors

Stephen J. Nicholls, MBBS, PhD; John J. P. Kastelein, MD, PhD; Gregory G. Schwartz, MD, PhD; Dianna Bash, RN; Robert S. Rosenson, MD; Matthew A. Cavender,MD, MPH; Danielle M. Brennan, MS; Wolfgang Koenig, MD; J.Wouter Jukema, MD, PhD; Vijay Nambi, MD, PhD; R. Scott Wright, MD; Venu Menon, MD; A. Michael Lincoff, MD; Steven E. Nissen, MD; for the VISTA-16 Investigators 1

Notice anything. Ah yes, Steven Nissen appears once again on a major study. He certainly gets about does our Steven. Another name that means much to me, but nothing to you, is John P Kastelein….he gets about too. Hardly a day passes without these guys running a major clinical trial, and then writing about it. I think they must have been cloned in the past to get through so much work.

Anyhoo,  enough of them. What is, or was, VARESPLADIB, and why should you care. Here from the study itself.

‘Varespladib methyl is a nonspecific pan-sPLA2 inhibitor with favorable effects on atherosclerotic lesions in animal studies. Initial studies demonstrated that varespladib reduced levels of sPLA2-IIA by morethan 90%,in addition to lowering low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and C-reactive protein (CRP) in patients with stable coronary disease and ACS.’

So now you know. Or maybe not.

Stripped to its basics, varespladib (which I shall PLAD) is an anti-inflammatory drug specifically designed to reduce the inflammatory cascade that is thought to be a major cause/risk factor for heart disease. Not only that, but it reduces LDL ‘bad/naughty cholesterol’ and C reactive protein too – a sign of inflammation in the arteries. Possibly CRP may even be a cause of CHD… in truth you might think it is a cause, if you are idiot.

Some years ago I wrote that we should await the C-reactive protein lowering agents. On the basis that a high CRP levels had been identified as ‘risk factor’ for heart disease. I wasn’t sure if it would happen, but I suspected it would. I predicted that lowering CRP would be a complete and utter waste of time.

Inflammation cannot, I have always said, be the cause of anything. Inflammation is the way that the body heals itself. If you cut yourself you will develop a red and inflamed area around the cut, otherwise known as inflammation. The inflammation did not cause the cut, the cut caused the inflammation.

However, such is the idiotic thinking in heart disease research that various people, led by Paul Ridker, decreed that inflammation causes heart disease (and not the other way around). They then decreed that if you could lower the inflammation that the risk of heart disease would fall. The noise in the background is the mad stampede of pharmaceutical companies rushing off to find drugs to block the inflammatory pathway, lower CRP, and cure heart disease.

Enter PLAD. Here we have a drug that lowers inflammation, lowers CRP, and as an extra added bonus  lowers LDL ‘bad/naughty’ cholesterol, so it should provide a triple benefit. And guess what we find:

‘At a prespecified interim analysis, including 212 primary end point events, the independent data and safety monitoring board recommended termination of the trial for futility and possible harm.’

The conclusions:

‘In patients with recent ACS (acute coronary syndrome – a heart attack to you and me), varespladib did not reduce the risk of recurrent cardiovascular events and significantly increased the risk of MI. The sPLA2inhibition with varespladib may be harmful and is not a useful strategy to reduce adverse cardiovascular outcomes after ACS.’

I am sure that there are a whole new bunch of anti-inflammatory agents out there, being trialled as I write this. I am also sure that they will fail. Hey guys, you could save billions if you read my stuff.

Now, repeat after me. Blocking inflammation blocks healing. Block healing and you die. End of. Time for a glass of wine.

1: Varespladib and Cardiovascular Events in Patients With an Acute Coronary Syndrome The VISTA-16 Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA. doi:10.1001/jama.2013.282836

They have now, officially, all gone mad?

82 Replies

The Mad Hatter: ‘Have I gone mad?’

Alice: ‘I’m afraid so, you’re completely bonkers, but let me tell you something, the best people usually are.’

Alice in Wonderland

I find myself quoting Alice in Wonderland more and more these days. I now think it was never a children’s book, it was an accurate scientific analysis of human behaviour.

As many of you are aware the American medical authorities have come up with the latest guidelines to reduce cardiovascular risk. A major part of the guidelines is now to inform us all that we should forget about lowering cholesterol (LDL) levels, and just take a statin…. no matter what¹.

This is how the New York Times put it:

First, the guidelines have moved away from achieving target cholesterol levels.
Americans have long been urged to focus on their laboratory numbers. Many people are obsessive about checking their cholesterol levels and pursuing even better numbers. Doctors have been told to focus on these numbers and, in some cases, the quality of their care was assessed by the percentage of their patients with low cholesterol levels.

Those days are over. The new guidelines recognize that for patients who have exhausted lifestyle efforts and are considering drug therapy, the question is not whether a drug makes your lab tests better, but whether it lowers your risk of heart disease and stroke. Studies over the past several years have shown that improving your lab profile with drugs is not equivalent to lowering your heart risks².

One of the most influential cardiologists in the world, Steven Nissen, had this to say:
“The evidence was never there” for the LDL targets, he said. Past committees “made them up out of thin air,” he added.

Past committees made them up out of thin air….. Let me try that statement again…. Past committees made them up out of thin air. Exactly. Ex-bleedingly-zactly.

So, ladies and gentlemen, you have been conned. Utterly, completely and barefacedly conned, for the last thirty years. Your cholesterol level has absolutely no impact on your risk of cardiovascular disease. You think not? Well, that is precisely what they are saying in these guidelines. If not in quite such plain words.

But, of course, I am not being entirely fair to them. The level of LDL may actually matter after all – according to the same guidelines. For, as the New York Times article goes on to say.
There’s one exception to the numbers rule. People with very high levels of the harmful cholesterol known as LDL still need to worry about targets. The new guidelines set that LDL level at 190 milligrams per deciliter – but the principle is that if people have very high cholesterol levels, then their cardiovascular risk is so high that it is likely that treatment to reduce the levels would offset any risks of the drug treatment.

So, your LDL level doesn’t matter in the slightest, unless it is a very high level. Then the level does matter a great deal. Please explain, oh great cardiologists, does LDL, or does it not, cause cardiovascular disease.

Well, it seems that it both does, and does not, simultaneously. Amazingly, we have achieved a quantum state with LDL. It simultaneously exists as a molecule that can both cause – and not cause – CVD. Which means, of course, that the levels must be both lowered, and not lowered. Yes, well, this makes perfect sense. At least it would to a lunatic.

Perhaps if we open the box with the ‘at risk cat’ in it, we will find that this new version of Schrodinger’s cat died of a heart attack caused by LDL. Alternatively, it did not. Before opening the box, it exists in both possible states. It is an interesting variation on a theme.
The most astonishing thing is not that these people are now talking the most complete gibberish. They have been doing this for years. The most astonishing thing is that the vast majority of the population will still listen to what they have to say – and follow their advice.
Well, good luck with that all you billions of mad people, following the advice of these mad scientists Good luck with that indeed. I salute you. Meanwhile I shall attempt to find the answer to a far more important question than what causes heart disease.

“Why is a raven like a writing desk?”

1: http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/early/2013/11/11/01.cir.0000437740.48606.d1
2: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/12/3-things-to-know-about-the-new-cholesterol-guidelines/

The backlash begins

95 Replies

(Catalyst under fire)

Those who read this blog will know that Maryanne Demasai, a journalist at the Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC), put together two programmes. One questioning the cholesterol hypothesis; the other very critical of the over-prescribing of statins. They can be seen here.

Heart of the Matter Part 1 – Dietary Villains

Heart of the Matter Part 2 – Cholesterol Drug War

Over several months I helped Maryanne to put together the scientific arguments, and I feel proud to have done so. I warned her, though, that she should expect a vicious backlash if the programmes ever went out. Of course, it has happened.

Also, exactly as I told her, the attacks are not on the data. They can’t be, as the science she presented is pretty much spot-on. They are personal attacks on everyone who took part. Those she interviewed are being accused of being “crack-pot quacks”, ‘into earthing’….and ‘snake oil salesman selling vitamins’ etc.

You can see the latest (evidence free attack) here. A programme by media watch, which includes such scientific observations as the fact that Maryanne did not smile when speaking to a conventional ‘expert.’ Off with her head, the biased hussy! http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/

Of course none of this surprises me. I knew exactly what would happen, and how it would happen. This is not because I am sort of a genius. It is that I have seen it all before, many times. Here follows a personal testimonial from a Dutch Journalist Melchior Meijer, who had the temerity to criticise statins in the past:

‘My name is Melchior Meijer. I’m medical reporter for several magazines and newspapers in The Netherlands. Reporting about the many obvious flaws in the cholesterol hypothesis, shedding light on the biologically plausible adverse consequences of statin therapy, is as close to 21st century blasphemy as a medical journalist can come.

I experienced this in 2004, when I wrote an article about statins in a national newspaper. In the article, several doctors and scientists expressed well founded doubts about the safety of statin therapy in the general population. I also presented a few `anecdotal’ cases of statin induced harm, which were extremely easy to find.

The medical establishment reacted in fury and started an aggressive media offensive. Carefully avoiding the arguments in my article, they used their authority to hang me out on TV as a liar, a potential mass murderer. They called for `official measures’ to prevent naive journalists from making similar `tragic mistakes’ in the future.

They also took me to the Press Court, but they didn’t reckon with the fact that the Press Court checks facts and figures. The Court did an investigation and decided that I had just done my job, observing and questioning. [As an aside: the chief of my newspaper, born into a family of influential physicians, was not happy with the Court’s decision. He had already apologized on television for `this tragic mistake’.]

After this statin users started calling and mailing to the media, always reporting the same symptoms: various degrees of (muscle pain) and loss of muscle mass, exhaustion, personality changes and amnesia. But my colleagues didn’t like to take up this serious issue. That is, until last March when the TV-colleagues of TROS Radar, a consumer programme with an average of 2 million watchers (we have 16 million inhabitants), took up the subject.

Dutch cardiologist Dr Paul de Groot expressed his doubts about cholesterol as a causal factor, and postulated that statins sometimes do more harm than good, especially in primary prevention. Dr Uffe Ravnskov, who by the way was honoured yesterday with the prestigious Leo Prize for independent science, pointed out the many flaws in the cholesterol hypothesis.

The programme also interviewed people who had experienced devastating side effects from statins, which quickly disappeared upon discontinuation – although sometimes they did not. I was on the programme to explain how Unilever had succeeded in keeping an unfavourable article about its cholesterol lowering spread Flora out of the press.

When the shit hits the fan…

My time is limited, so I will make it short. Radar was vigorously attacked from all directions. Professors Martijn Katan and John Kastelein used various media outlets to shamelessly fire irrelevant, slanderous attacks on Dr Ravnskov. As usual, they did not address any of the scientific arguments. Radar invited Katan and Kastelijn for a public debate with Drs Ravsnkov and Kendrick, but they declined.

The Dutch Cardiologists Association, together with the Healthcare Inspectorate – and this is critical – announced official guidelines for medical journalists who plan to cover `delicate medical matters.’

History, you see, does repeat itself, and so I can predict what now happens in Australia. There will be calls to bring in ‘official guideline for medical journalists who plan to cover ‘delicate medical matters.’ This is also known as press censorship. It has been popular in various dictatorships over the years. Currently, North Korea is the best place to see this in action.

Believing in impossible things – there is a trick to it

74 Replies

At times, all you can do it shake your head in amazement, and wonder at the ability of people who think of themselves as scientists to make statements that are impossible to reconcile with reality, or logic….or pretty much anything to do with science.

Yesterday, I was sent a copy of a paper called ‘High coronary plaque load: a heavy burden.’ Published in the European Heart Journal in August 2013. It looked at the use of statins to reduce the volume of plaque in arteries. I include three verbatim quotes from the paper:

  • Of particular interest, neither LDL cholesterol levels at baseline nor those after high dose statin treatment could independently predict major adverse cardiovascular events (MACEs)
  • One of the most striking results of this study is the fact that LDL levels at baseline or after statin treatment showed no predictive value for MACEs. This could lead to doubt about the beneficial effect of LDL-lowering therapy. However, as also discussed by the authors, there is overwhelming evidence for the beneficial effects of statin therapy on plaque progression and MACEs.
  • Currently statin therapy is so fundamentally established in clinical practice that its beneficial effect is beyond doubt. Even though it has been demonstrated that in patients receiving statin therapy LDL levels have no additional prognostic value, further lowering of LDL cholesterol levels with novel PCSK9 monoclonal antibodies could further reduce the residual risk in these patients1.

So, the researchers discovered that LDL (‘bad’ cholesterol) levels did not predict major coronary events:  angina, heart failure, heart attacks and suchlike. Neither did the degree of LDL lowering with statins have any correlation with coronary events. At this point, having very clearly established that their research flatly contradicts the cholesterol hypothesis, they finished off by remarking that when the new cholesterol agents arrive, which will lower LDL levels even more than statins, they will ‘further reduce the residual risk in these patients.’

I shall try to reduce this paper to its ineluctable essence.

  • We have found that LDL levels have nothing to do with cardiovascular disease
  • We have found that the degree of LDL lowering with statins does not correlate with cardiovascular events
  • We think we need to the lower the LDL more to prevent cardiovascular disease

‘Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said. ‘One can’t believe impossible things.’

‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. ‘Lewis Carroll – Alice in Wonderland.

I suppose it becomes easier to believe in impossible things if you have a few conflicts of interest to help you along the way…..smooth the pathway of belief, so to speak. Here follows the conflict of interest statement from the paper:

Conflict of interest:

J.W.J. receives research grants from and was a speaker at meetings sponsored by Astellas, AstraZeneca, Biotronic, Boston Scientific, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Cordis, Daiichi Sankyo, Eli Lilly and Company, Medtronic, Merck-Schering Plough, Pfizer, Orbus Neich, Novartis, Roche, Servier, the Netherlands Heart Foundation,the Interuniversity Cardiology Institute of the Netherlands, and the European Community Framework KP7 programme. M.A.dG. has no conflicts to declare. The Department of Cardiology received research grants from Biotronik, Medtronic, Boston Scientific

Corporation, St Jude Medical, Lantheus Medical Imaging, and GE Healthcare.

For those paying attention, you may have noticed the mention of PCSKP monoclonal antibodies earlier.  What are these, I hear you cry. These are the next monstrous regiment of cholesterol lowering agents that are waiting in the wings, engines running smoothly. If you thought statins were heavily promoted – you ain’t seen nothing yet.

You may not be astonished to learn that one or two of the companies listed in the conflict of interest statement of that paper are developing PCSK9 monoclonal antibodies. I wonder if that could have anything to do with the statement……’further lowering of LDL cholesterol levels with novel PCSK9 monoclonal antibodies could further reduce the residual risk in these patients.’

And if that thought depresses you, as it does me, here is a little poem by W.H. Auden to cheer you up:

‘Give me a doctor partridge-plump,
Short in the leg and broad in the rump,
An endomorph with gentle hands
Who’ll never make absurd demands
That I abandon all my vices
Nor pull a long face in a crisis,
But with a twinkle in his eye
Will tell me that I have to die.’

1: Michiel A. de Graaf and J.Wouter Jukema. ‘High coronary plaque load: a heavy burden.’ European Heart Journal (2013) 34, 3168–3170

A new blog that I hope you will support

11 Replies

HealthInsightUK.org gives progressive doctors and health experts a platform to make a science-based case for changes in the treatment and prevention of disease.
Edited by award-winning health journalist Jerome Burne, HealthInsightUK explains, without bias, why drugs are not the only – and may not be the best way to cut the risk of the big 3 killers: cancer, heart disease and diabetes, as well as the major debilitators: obesity and Alzheimer’s.
The team sets out the science behind ‘alternative’ regimes, which your doctor may not have the time or inclination to discuss – and which drug companies have no financial reason to research.
HealthInsightUK will be, Jerome Burne says, “an independent and reliable source of information about drug risks and side effects, as well as providing scientific evidence for non-patentable treatments.”

The launch version which goes live today leads, with an article by Jerome Burne about why a very low carb diet could be a new treatment for cancer.

Integrated medicine practitioner and nutrition specialist Dr John Briffa GP describes the British Heart Foundation’s promotion of a risky treatment; statin-sceptic Dr Malcolm Kendrick explains why statin’s side-effects outweigh the benefits and Dr Des Spence, a columnist for the BMJ, asks: if diabetes is a lifestyle disease why do we spend 600 million treating it with drugs?

Sweden gets it right

162 Replies

I sometimes think that I should go and live in a Scandinavian country. They get so many things right about how to run healthy, equitable, societies. In addition, the people who live there seem more balanced and, well, frankly, more grown up. So it comes as no surprise to me that if a nation was to turn round and begin the process of rejecting the absolute nonsense that a high fat diet is bad for you, then it would be a country in Scandinavia.

That Scandinavian country is Sweden1.

Now, I have been aware that there has been a movement towards a high fat low carb diet (HFLC) going on in Sweden for some years. This has been led recently by the heroic Dr Annika Dahlqvist, a General Practitioner who had been advising her diabetic patients to eat a low carb high fat diet (LCHF).

She was, of course, attacked by the idiots…sorry experts:

‘In 2007, the controversy began when two dieticians pointed out to Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare that LCHF dietary advice recommended to diabetic patients by general practitioner Dr Annika Dahlqvist was not compatible with either scientific evidence or conventional practice. However, following a report by diabetologist Dr Christian Berne, Dahlqvist was cleared.’

Cleared of what, exactly? Advising diabetic patients not to eat sugar. The mere fact that anyone could be dragged in front of the authorities for advising this just shows had completely mad the world of dietary advice has become. How entrenched the idiotic anti-fat dogma now is. How utterly divorced from reality and science.

As I have pointed out many times on this blog, and elsewhere, carbohydrates, at least all the carbohydrates humans can digest, are converted to sugar(s) in the GI system. They must be, because all that carbohydrates consist of are different number of sugar molecules bonded together in different ways. When you break them to bits in the digestive system, they become simple sugars.

As we all know, people with diabetes have problems with high blood sugar levels. So, dum de dum….let me think. Should diabetics eat carbohydrates/sugar, or should they eat fats. Yes, you are right, they should eat fats. This is a complete no brainer.

But, of course, the argument goes that diabetics are more likely to die of cardiovascular disease and eating fat increases cholesterol levels, and this increases your risk of cardiovascular disease. Well, this could obviously be a problem if any part of that causal chain were true. But it is all nonsense. As the latest Swedish report from the SBU (Swedish Council on Health Technology Assessment) makes clear (after reviewing 13,000 studies), a low carb diet leads to the terrible dangers of

‘…a greater increase in HDL cholesterol (“the good cholesterol”) without having any adverse effects on LDL cholesterol (“the bad cholesterol”). This applies to both the moderate low-carbohydrate intake of less than 40 percent of the total energy intake, as well as to the stricter low-carbohydrate diet, where carbohydrate intake is less than 20 percent of the total energy intake. In addition, the stricter low-carbohydrate diet will lead to improved glucose levels for individuals with obesity and diabetes, and to marginally decreased levels of triglycerides.’2

In short, when they looked at all the evidence, they found that low carb/high fat diets raise HDL cholesterol (the so-called ‘good’ cholesterol). They have no effect on LDL levels; they also lower blood sugar levels and triglyceride (VLDL) levels. All good and healthy, and all of which bascially means that insulin resistance has been reduced – the underlying cause of diabetes.

In reality all that the Swedes really ‘discovered’ is the quite astonishing fact that eating a high carbohydrate diet is bad for you, and worse for you if you are a diabetic. Well, blow me down with a feather. They have found exactly what a working knowledge of human biology/physiology would tell you would happen.

But we live in a wold controlled by entrenched stupidity, dogma, and the financial interests of massive companies who are making billions selling tasteless low fat mush. These companies know that the only way you can make low fat food, e.g. low fat yoghurt, taste like anything half palatable is to stuff it with sugar. Cheap, nasty, and damaging to health – also driving the ever increasing weight gain and diabetes in the Western World.

Why is everyone in the Western World becoming obese? Because we are replacing fat with sugar in many foodstuffs. The obesity ‘epidemic’ started at exactly the same time as the idiots, sorry experts, decreed that a healthy diet was a diet full of carbs. Which was, and remains, the exact and complete opposite of the truth.

However, anyone who dares to stand up and state the truth, gets dragged in from of organisations such as the National Board of health and Welfare. Eventually, however, the truth does emerge, as it must. Because the truth never dies. It can be stomped on, squashed, concreted over and napalmed. However, it lives on, taunting those who do everything in their power to deny its existence.

The truth is that all of the dietary advice we have been bombarded with for the last forty years about the dangers of fat consumption has been utterly and completely and damagingly wrong. Of course there will be a backlash against the Swedish report – there always is. Various powerful idiots, sorry experts, will be pushed in front of cameras to make various denunciations of the Swedes and their damaging and dangerous conclusions. The strings of these idiots will be jerked in unison by faceless marketers in companies that promote low fat spreads, and the like. Yes, you know who you are.

And yes, this stuff does make me angry. It is killing people prematurely, millions of people, all around the world.

1: http://coconutoil.com/sweden-becomes-first-western-nation-to-reject-low-fat-diet-dogma-in-favor-of-low-carb-high-fat-nutrition/

2: http://www.dietdoctor.com/swedish-expert-committee-low-carb-diet-effective-weight-loss

P.S:

Question:            ‘What do you call five hundred dieticians lying at the bottom of the ocean?’
Answer:               ‘A good start.’

So much for scientific debate

25 Replies

I thank Ted Hutchinson for pointing me at this article in the Irish Independent. It appeared on the 5th of October, and I reprint it in full, here.

A LEADING vascular surgeon, whose research review concluded cholesterol-lowering medicines may do more harm than good for many otherwise healthy people, has been gagged by the Health Service Executive.

Sherif Sultan, a senior medic at University College Hospital, Galway, reviewed a range of studies of statins and found a lack of evidence to show they should be given as a means of prevention to healthy people with high cholesterol but no heart disease.

Mr Sultan and his surgeon colleague Niamh Hynes said lifestyle changes to reduce cholesterol were better because this allowed people to avoid the risk of statins’ side effects.

However, in a statement last night, Dr Pat Nash, a cardiologist and the group clinical director in University College Hospital said the recently published views of his colleagues were “not representative” of those in Galway or neighbouring hospitals.

“As group clinical director of the West/North West Hospitals Group, and a working cardiologist, I wish to reassure patients that statins are safe,” said Dr Nash.

“These are very important, well-validated drugs for the treatment of elevated cholesterol. We have extensive evidence to show their benefit and to show that they improve outcomes for patients with heart disease and stroke and that they have a role in preventing heart disease and stroke.

“As always, if patients have any concerns, they should not discontinue their medication without discussing with their GP or consultant.”

Asked to comment, Mr Sultan said: “I have received an official warning from the HSE and have been instructed not to liaise directly with the press in my capacity as a HSE consultant.” However, he said he could continue to comment as a consultant vascular surgeon at the Galway Clinic, where he has a private practice.

The HSE declined to comment on the reasons for ordering Mr Sultan not to speak as a public consultant. He said he stood by his analysis of the role of statins in otherwise healthy patients with high cholesterol. He pointed to another recently published review on exercise versus drug therapy in the management of pre-diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

“That ‘British Medical Journal’ analysis showed the superiority of exercise over drug therapy extends even to secondary prevention (where patients have developed disease)1.

This story has been rumbling on for a while. A report on the research paper can be found in the Irish Medical Times from a couple of weeks before.

The under-reporting of findings on major adverse effects of statin therapy and the way in which they had been withheld from the public, and even concealed, is a scientific farce, claims new Irish research.

Mr Sherif Sultan, Consultant Vascular and Endovascular Surgeon, and Niamh Hynes, Clinical Lecturer In Vascular and Endovascular Surgery, claimed their study, just published in the Journal of Endocrine and Metabolic Diseases (2013, 3, 179-185) highlights the major side-effects and dangers of statins.

They said there is a categorical lack of clinical evidence to support the use of statin therapy in primary prevention. They are both based in the Western Vascular Institute at University College Hospital Galway and the Galway Clinic. “Odds are greater than 100-to-1 that if you’re taking a statin, you don’t really need it2..

I was sent the original paper by Sherif Sultan a couple of months ago, and it is very scathing about statins….. very scathing indeed. It even suggests, perish the very thought, that pharmaceutical companies may have been trying to present statins in the best light possible. I find such a suggestion almost impossible to believe. Knowing how completely ethical these companies are.

Anyway, I suppose the key phrase in all of this sorry episode is the following:

“The HSE declined to comment on the reasons for ordering Mr Sultan not to speak as a public consultant.”

If the Health Service Executive were to comment, what could they say to justify their actions?

“The hell with scientific debate. He should just damned will shut up and say what we want him to say?”

“How dare anyone criticise the sainted statins which work in mysterious ways their wonders to perform.”

“We expect utter loyalty from those who work in the glorious Irish Health Service. Those who do not support us can expect serious sanctions……”

On balance, declining to comment is probably the best policy for the HSE. Because if you start trying to justify why you are gagging a researcher for trying to tell the truth then, well, you will end up having to justify state censorship of scientific debate. Which never looks that good on the printed page, I find.

I feel I should sign off this blog with a quote from George Orwell, taken from 1984. “Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”

1: http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/hse-gags-surgeon-after-cholesterol-drug-claims-29636095.html

2: http://www.imt.ie/news/latest-news/2013/09/study-claims-to-highlight-the-ugly-side-of-statins.html

Please sign – most important issue

13 Replies

I received this post and felt the immediate need to post it on my blog, to allow as many people as possible to sign a petition to stop pharmaceutical companies hiding adverse event data on their drug FOREVER. This is a hugely important issue for humanity.

See below…

Sorry for the Mass Posting here but we have just posted a Swedish translation of the RxISK petition calling for Access to Clinical Trial Data.

Some of you will have signed this but even if you have read on because we have a mission for you.

Two years ago, the European Ombudsman ruled that the European Medicines Agency should open up access to Clinical Trial Data for anyone who applied from anywhere in the world.

Six months ago two US pharmaceutical companies AbbVie and InterMune took a legal action against EMA that has closed down access to all trial data for all drugs for all doctors and researchers anywhere in the world…

Some of you may not have heard of AbbVie. Until recently they were Abbott Laboratories, one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world.

They make Humira, a monoclonal antibody used for Rheumatoid Arthritis, Crohn’s Disease, Psoriasis and other conditions. It is the best selling drug in the world today, and projected to be the best selling drug of all time.

This is one of the most important legal actions in Healthcare ever. At a recent meeting in Bruxelles AbbVie made it clear that a main reason to keep clinical trial data confidential was to hide adverse event data, although there may be other issues like a Trade War with China.

You can read about this and see the whole video here

Essentially AbbVie are asking the Courts to grant their Corporation the privacy rights of an individual – a very powerful wealthy individual.

But the key help is this. If this legal action succeeds Adverse Event data will be hidden for ever.

So we’d love you and anyone you know to sign a petition calling on AbbVie to drop their legal action against the EMA’s policy of open access to clinical trial data. The petition is here or in Swedish as above

This petition is as much for anyone who may be prescribed drugs as for those prescribing them – so we are hoping to spread word about it generally.

In addition to signing, we are trying to get every country in the world to sign.

We have 72 of the 187 countries in the world signed up but would love to have all.  If any of you have contacts in any Eastern European, African or South East Asian countries that you could get to sign this it would be really excellent

Thanks, David

David Healy
Professor of Psychiatry, Hergest Unit,
Bangor, Wales LL57 2PW, UK

E david.healy54@googlemail.com
B davidhealy.org

Too much medicine – dementia

35 Replies

I am, in general, distinctly sceptical about mass screening programmes. Politicians, however, just love them. They use the complex scientific principle of ‘A stitch in time, save nine.’ Or else the concept of pure logical reasoning known as ‘Better to be safe than sorry.’

On a very superficial level screening is obviously a good thing. You pick up a disease early, then you ‘treat’ it, then it is gone. Huzzah! Pink ribbon anyone? Indeed, how could anyone possibly argue with such an obviously sensible thing to do? So sensible that we are drawn to this idea like moths to a flame. We flutter around it, unable to break free from its mesmerising power.

I am not suggesting that all forms of screening are useless. My favourite screening test is to take someone’s pulse. You can tell within about twenty seconds, or less, if someone has atrial fibrillation (AF). If they do, this is a condition that can be effectively managed, reducing the risk of stroke by nearly a half.

This test costs nothing, requires no great skill, is non-invasive, and…… of course it is not on any screening programme anywhere in the world (as far as I know).  Strange, as it fulfils virtually all of the criteria of a successful screening test. As outlined by the WHO as far back as 1968

World Health Organization guidelines on assessing the value of a screening test

  • The condition should be an important health problem.
  • There should be a treatment for the condition.
  • Facilities for diagnosis and treatment should be available.
  • There should be a latent stage of the disease.
  • There should be a test or examination for the condition.
  • The test should be acceptable to the population.
  • The natural history of the disease should be adequately understood.
  • There should be an agreed policy on whom to treat.
  • The total cost of finding a case should be economically balanced in relation to medical expenditure as a whole.
  • Case-finding should be a continuous process, not just a “once and for all” project

Instead, we have vastly expensive, poorly sensitive tests for diseases where our treatments are poor, and our knowledge of the natural history of the disease is virtually non-existent. I am not discussing cancer screening here as that is a far more nuanced area.

What I am talking about here, specifically, is dementia screening. Which is the latest bonkers, poorly thought though, damaging bit of stupidity that the UK Govt is now intent forcing on General Practitioners in the UK – and the US. And that was the polite version of my real views.

Here is what the BMJ has to say about dementia screening:

‘Conclusions—Current policy is rolling out untested and uncontrolled experiments in the frailest people in society without a rigorous evaluation of its benefits and harms to individuals, families, service settings, and professionals.’

In fact, the entire article is a paean of common sense, and I would recommend anyone to try and get hold of it, and read it. But journals place themselves behind pay for view barriers nowadays, so you probably can’t.

However on of my favourite passages is the following

‘What will be the effect of encouraging more widespread and earlier diagnosis of dementia? A meta-analysis of the diagnostic accuracy of clinical tools used by general practitioners, including 15 studies on dementia, estimated that if, a clinician saw 100 consecutive community based patients with a prevalence of dementia of 6%, using current criteria he or she would correctly identify four of the six but would incorrectly identify dementia in a further 23 people.’

In short, if there were six out of a hundred patients in the community with early stage dementia. The average clinical would miss two of them, and state that twenty three without the condition had it. My, how fantastically accurate.

A good screening test needs to pick up (or not miss) well over ninety five per-cent of people who have the condition, and not misdiagnose more than one – or two – in a hundred.  A misdiagnosis (false positive), is not a trivial thing. ‘I am sorry to tell you Mrs Smith, that you have dementia.’ The effects of being told this can be utterly devastating.

Finances, family planning, the sense of despair that you are going to end up unable to recognise your close family. Dribbling to yourself in a nursing home, doubly incontinent.  These are all the things that flash through people’s minds when told they have dementia.

‘But don’t worry, we haven’t got any effective treatment for it either….. you will be glad to know….’ The doctors shall then happily inform the three out of four people that they have MISDIAGNOSED. Whilst thirty per cent of those with dementia wander off happily, reassured that they don’t have dementia – when they have actually got it.

There are times, when I look at the direction of travel in medicine, that I almost give in to despair. There is not enough money to pay for many proven and effective treatments. We are closing hospital beds and making nurses redundant. Our psychiatric services are virtually exterminated due to lack of funding, with severely distressed people unable to access any support.

Yet we can find money – it seems- to fund a completely useless. Sorry, not completely useless. Dementia screening is far more that completely useless – it is actively damaging. We have money to pour into an actively damaging, vastly expensive screening programme to pick up a disease that we cannot actually treat in any meaningful way. Gasp…thud. Noise of head hitting desk.

Luckily, there is always malt whisky to dull the pain.

’Political drive to screen for pre-dementia:
not evidence based and ignores the harms of diagnosis.’

Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How big pharma has corrupted healthcare

11 Replies

Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How big pharma has corrupted healthcareA bold title for a blog indeed, but not mine (I almost hasten to add). This is the title of a new book by Professor Peter Gotzsche.  I have ordered it, and started to read it. Gotzsche does not hold back. As the introduction states:

We take so many drugs is that drug companies don’t sell drugs, they sell lies about drugs. This is what makes drugs so different from anything else in life…Virtually everything we know about drugs is what the companies have chosen to tell us and our doctors…the reason patients trust their medicine is that they extrapolate the trust they have in their doctors into the medicines they prescribe. The patients don’t realise that, although their doctors may know a lot about diseases and human physiology and psychology, they know very, very little about drugs that hasn’t been carefully concocted and dressed up by the drug industry…If you don’t think the system is out of control, then please email me and explain why drugs are the third leading cause of death…If such a hugely lethal epidemic had been caused by a new bacterium or a virus, or even one hundredth of it, we would have done everything we could to get it under control.

This is a short blog. The only reason I have written it is to make you aware that this book exists, and to urge you to buy it, and read it.

Disclosure of Interest (D.O.I). I have absolutely no financial interest in this book. I know Peter Gotzsche through e-mail conversations.

What is your blood pressure (BP)?

85 Replies

Central arterial blood pressure

(What is it, don’t like it. Pay attention it could save your life)

It is a pressure that is measured, almost exclusively, by placing a cuff around one arm – usually the left. The cuff is then inflated to a point whereby all blood flow is stopped. If you have placed a stethoscope over the brachial artery (artery in the arm) you will hear nothing at this point. Because there is no blood flow, and nothing to hear.

As the pressure in the cuff is lowered, a noise will be heard as the blood first starts to squeeze through. This is defined as the systolic blood pressure i.e. the point of highest arterial pressure, just after the heart contracts. A sharp tapping noise would be the best description.

As you lower the pressure in the cuff, the noise changes and muffles. Eventually, there will come a point where the blood is flowing through the brachial artery all the time …the point of ‘lowest’ blood pressure. Once this pressure is reached, the noises in the brachial artery cease. This is defined as the diastolic blood pressure. (The pressure does not reach zero, because the heart pumps once again to boost the pressure again).

All of this means that your blood pressure is presented as two figures. The highest recorded pressure (systolic) over the lowest (diastolic).

Historically, blood pressure measured in millimetres of mercury. Because, in the good old days, blood pressure meant how many millimetres of mercury could be pushed up a tube by the force of the cuff being inflated round the arm. If you used water in the tube, instead of mercury, we would measure in metres, not millimetres.

Despite the fact that mercury has nothing to do with the process any more, the measurement is still called mmHg (millimetres of mercury that can be pushed up a narrow tube). A normal blood pressure is around 120/70. If you are an Olympic weightlifter, the blood pressure can reach over 300mmHg during a lift. Which is pretty high.

In a nutshell that is what your blood pressure is…. but what does it mean? The pressure in your arm is certainly not the same as the pressure in your finger, or your brain. The pressure will be different in the right and left arms, as the blood has further to go before it reaches your right arm. It will be different if the cuff is put in a slightly different place on the arm. It will also be different if you are stressed, if the cuff is a bit small – or slightly too big.

In short, your blood pressure can be all over the place. Which is why a single measurement is not used to define high blood pressure. You need at least three. In fact, this is not nearly enough either. To diagnose someone with high blood pressure you really need to monitor the blood pressure over a twenty four hour period – using ambulatory monitoring. This helps to get rid of ‘white coat’ hypertension (high blood pressure). A phenomenon whereby the act of a healthcare professional wrapping a cuff round your arm sends your blood pressure sky high.

Because of the difficulties of measuring the blood pressure, it is estimated that around twenty five per cent of people diagnosed as having hypertension – do not actually have high blood pressure at all. Which means that they are taking drugs that they do not need. Costing the NHS at least a billion a year, and a great deal more around the world (yes, this truly is an international blog).

The other major problem with measuring the blood pressure at the arm is that it may not reflect the blood pressure just after the blood leaves the heart. The central arterial pressure. This is important, because this is the most critical pressure of all. There are a number of reasons why this is so.

Firstly, the central arterial pressure is the pressure in the aortic arch (the U bend in the aorta (biggest artery in the body)). This represents the pressure that sends blood straight up the carotid arteries and into the brain, which is clearly important with regard to stroke risk. [This where two, critically important, small BP sensing organs sit]

It is also the pressure that has the greatest impact on the kidneys. The renal arteries branch directly from the aorta itself. Therefore the central arterial pressure is closely monitored by the kidneys, which are the primary organs of blood pressure control. In addition, the central pressure has the greatest impact on the aorta itself. A relatively common cause of death is a ‘ballooning’ of the aorta (aortic aneurysm).  Such aneurysms can burst, with obviously catastrophic results.

Now, there is no doubt that the pressure at the arm is related to the central arterial pressure. It must be – to a certain degree. And for most people measuring at the arm is probably a good enough estimate of the ‘true’ blood pressure.

However, if your blood pressure measurement is high, or low, or you are on blood pressure medication….then the pressure measured in the arm becomes increasingly unreliable. It can even become misleading i.e. your pressure seems to be going down in the arm – but it is not going down as much centrally1. (It may even be going up.)

‘The results of the Conduit Artery Functional Endpoint (CAFE) study also suggest that the central aortic blood pressure may be more predictive of cardiovascular events, such as stroke and heart attack, than traditional peripheral (brachial) blood pressure measurements. CAFE was the first study to repeatedly measure central aortic pressure in a major clinical outcomes trial and the first to show that central aortic pressure is a plausible mechanism to explain the better clinical outcomes seen in patients treated with amlodipine-based therapy in ASCOT.’

Of course, central arterial blood pressure is somewhat difficult to measure. Up till fairly recently you had to insert a catheter, with a measuring device, into to the femoral artery, and push it up to the aortic arch. This would not be highly practical during a consultation with a GP. So central BP is very rarely measured. But it would be best if it could…

The anomalies of blood pressure trials

Now to introduce another thread to this discussion. Which is the fact that, if you choose to look at the clinical trials on blood pressure lowering with an objective eye, there is almost no correlation between the amount the blood pressure is lowered (at the arm) – and any clinical outcomes. By which I mean that the rate of heart attacks and strokes do not relate to the degree of blood pressure lowering.

To quote a series of bullet point in the European Journal of Cardiology entitled ‘There is a non-linear relationship between mortality and blood pressure’:

  • Drugs that lower the blood pressure by about the same amount have very different effects on outcomes
  • Cardiovascular benefits of ACE-inhibitors (Angiotensin Converting Enzyme – Inhibitors), independent of blood pressure, are not observed with calcium antagonists, despite the latter having more pronounced effects on blood pressure.
  • HOPE (Heart Outcomes Prevention Evaluation study) demonstrated that ACE inhibitors provided diverse and profound cardiovascular benefits, with only trivial differences in blood pressure between the treatment and control groups
  • ALLHAT (Antihypertensive and Lipid Lowering treatment to prevent Heart Attack Trial) showed a dramatic difference in cardiovascular risk between alpha blockers and diuretics, with essentially no difference in their effect on blood pressure. The investigators of ALLHAT concluded ‘blood pressure lowering is an inadequate surrogate marker for health benefits in hypertension.’

This is extremely important, because for many years, most of the ‘evidence’ on blood pressure treatment has been based on a statistical model known as the ‘log-linear’ model. This model states that ‘the relation of blood pressure to risk of death is continuous, graded, and strong, and there is no evidence of a threshold.’ (Stamler). The model itself, and that statement, were almost entirely based on evidence from the Framingham Heart Study. The study that your doctors will use to calculate your risk of dying of heart disease.

Essentially, according the log-linear model, the lower your blood pressure (measured at your arm), the better. And the more that drugs lower it, the better. At least this is the thinking that is currently used.

However, thirty years ago Ancel Keys (yes, him) concluded that the linear model, in terms of the relationship of overall and coronary heart disease death to blood pressure was ‘unjustified’. Ten years ago, the authors of the article ‘There is a non-linear relationship between mortality and blood pressure’ further concluded (after reviewing the Framingham data – the data upon which your doctor will determine your future risk of dying of CVD)…the following:

‘Shockingly, we have found that the Framingham data in no way supported the current paradigm to which they gave birth. In fact, these data actually statistically rejected the linear model. This fact has major consequences. Statistical theory now tells us that the paradigm MUST be false ….’ (Their italics and capital letters).

In short, the blood pressure model that is used worldwide is simply, plain damned wrong. The reality is that the amount the blood pressure is lowered in the arm bears little, or no, relationship to any benefit on heart attacks and stroke.  How can this be? Well, there are two major reasons for this. One of which I am covering in this article. The other, later. Now to introduce another thread.

How do blood pressure lowering drugs work?

I am going to avoid being too technical here – which is tricky. I am also, only focussing on the four most commonly used blood pressure lowering agents/classes.

1: Diuretics. These drugs make you pass more urine, by blocking sodium re-absorption by nephrons in the kidney. This means that you pass a lot of urine (diuresis). This puts you into a state of mild dehydration, thus reducing blood volume. Exactly why this lowers your blood pressure is a moot point. (You may think you know. However, it is almost certainly far more complicated that what you are thinking – I certainly don’t understand it)

2: Beta-blockers: These, effectively, slow your heart rate and also decrease the pumping force of your heart. An unwanted effect is that they also cause peripheral blood vessel constriction.

3: Calcium channel blockers: These reduce the force of contraction of the heart, dilate blood vessels (arteries not veins), and slow the heart rate at bit. All of which lowers the blood pressure.

4: ACE-inhibitors: (a bit more explanation is required to explain how they work). The kidneys are the primary organs that control blood pressure. If they pick up that the BP is too low, they release a substance called renin. Renin triggers a whole series of other hormones into action. Ending up with increased angiotensin II levels.

This hormone has multiple effects. It reduces urine production, by increasing sodium absorption. It causes constriction of arteries, and stimulates the pituitary gland to produce anti-diuretic hormone (ADH) – thus reducing urine output.  It does several  other things too, all of which result in the blood pressure going up.

As is the complex way of the body, the kidney doesn’t actually produce angiotensinogen II  when the blood pressure drops(which would seem logical). The kidney produces renin, the liver produces angiotensinogen. When these two hormones met, angiotensinogen is converted into angiotensin I. Then angiotensin I is further converted to angiotensin II by an enzyme called Angiotensin Converting Enzyme (ACE). (There will be an exam later)

All of this means that angiotensin II is the main, active, substance. Once it has been produced, angiotensin II goes off to do all its blood pressure raising things. If, however, you give an ACE-inhibiting drug (ACE-inhibitor), angiotensin II production is blocked, and the blood pressure will fall.

Anyway, as I hope has now become clear, the blood pressure lowering classes of drugs all work though very different mechanism. They all lower the blood pressure at the arm, but what else are they doing?

Beta blockers tend to constrict peripheral blood vessels. Calcium channel blockers and ACE-inhibitors tend to dilate them. Diuretics are mainly neutral on blood vessel diameter.  ACE-inhibitors also do something else that is extremely important. They stimulate Nitric Oxide synthesis in the blood vessels themselves, which both dilates arteries, and increases blood vessel flexibility.

In short, the effect on central and peripheral blood pressure of various BP lowering medications will be very different.

Bringing these thoughts together

You may think, why now? Why is he quoting articles, and research, from many years ago? Well, you have to bear in mind that it is a long time since anyone did a placebo controlled blood pressure lowering study. It would be considered unethical to do so now (such are the alleged enormous benefits of BP lowering). So, there isn’t really any fresh information. Just the monitoring of one drug vs. another, and assuming benefit based on the degree of BP lowering – using the log-linear scale.

However, it has now become possible to measure central blood pressure by simply using a cuff placed round the arm. I have had this process explained to me many times, and cannot really understand how it is done. But the results are repeatable, and accurately reflect central blood pressure. Which is all that really matters.

When you do this, you can also measure the velocity of the pulse wave, which is an accurate indicator of arterial flexibility – and thus arterial health. If your arteries are stiff this is a worrying sign, and reflects poor arterial health. The more flexible your arteries are, the better.

At last, hoorah, instead of wrapping a simple cuff round people’s arms, we can use a complicated cuff to look at two more, really important things. The central blood pressure, and arterial flexibility. This gives us far more information.

Perhaps most importantly, we can monitor the effects that different blood pressure lowering medications have, beyond their impact on the BP measured at the arm. We can see if central pressure is increased, or decreased, or if arterial compliance (flexibility) is improved.

I think that this is a major breakthrough in medical practice. So much so, that I have acquired a machine for myself, and will be using it on a regular basis. I fear it will take the wider medical profession about twenty years or so for this to become an accepted way of measuring blood pressure. This is about the normal lead time for new ideas to become standard practice.

Sweden 1967

Sweden in 1967

It may, of course, take longer. Or never happen at all. At the risk of going off on a major tangent, I remember looking at pictures of roads Sweden in 1967. This was when they switched from driving on the left, to driving on the right. 3rd Sept 1967

As you can see from the picture, a bit of a mess. But imagine if any country tried to do it now, with the extra number of cars and lorries, and roads, and signs. This would probably be just too difficult.

How about changing the way we look at measuring blood pressure. We have always measured blood pressure using a simple cuff on the arm. All the clinical studies on BP lowering were done using this technique. All the data, all the guidelines….everything, is now based on doing BP measurement in this way.

Just imagine what happens if someone now says. Hold on, this is not good enough. The measurement is inaccurate and potentially confusing, and it doesn’t’ really tell us what we need to know. Let us start again. Let us drive on the right, not the left.

In the meantime, whilst the medical world grapples (or chooses not to grapple) with a trillion dollar problem, you can do yourself a favour and get your blood pressure measured centrally.

More on this later.

1: http://www.medscape.org/viewarticle/518570

2: Port S, et al: ‘There is a non-linear relationship between mortality and blood pressure.’ European Heart Journal (2000) 21, pp. 1635 – 1638