In other words, this analysis confirmed the earlier paper by the same group (which didn’t get any press) that aggressive lipid lowering with statins is associated with an increase in cancer. But now we have a grant from the manufacturer, so the conclusions are changed.

We don’t know. Statins are _not_ “off the hook” to the extent that the correlation with cancer and low LDL is real and statins yield low LDL. The initial association may be an artificact of other physio processes. Or it may not be.

Bottom line. There are a lot of people who have a lot invested (literally) in the NCEP guidelines. I do not anticipate that “vigorous scentific debate” - as we have seen it in action - will make it easy to sort things out.

Does “Wally” = Voila?

Anyway, I think I get the drift. At _this point_ statin induced low LDL, compared with Mother Nature induced low LDL, the statin folks have shown less cancer.

But, as for the future, only the Shadow knows…

C’est ca?

Ed - you wrote it. Can you help this poor soul?

This sentence is confusing almost by design. Lets see if we can make sense of it. Low LDL is associated with increased cancer risk take low LDL give time wally cancer. When you take an LDL level say 75 without statins those on statins with that same level have less cancer than those with the same level naturally. Why. Time. Given time those who have reduced LDL with statins will probably have more cancer than those at the same start level who chose not to reduce LDL level.

Would the following be true, based on this study:

Lower levels of LDL are associated with higher rates of cancer.

That is true whether those levels, whatever they are, are in pts who are not on statin therapy or those who are.

Or am I still not getting it? For example, do pts whose LDL is pushed down to, say, 50 via statins have the same cancer rate as those who have 50 “naturally”?

If that cancer rate is higher than those who have an LDL of, say, 100, is it not _possible_ (though not shown) that attaining such levels via statins _does_ correlate with cancer risk?

Obviously, the core question here concerns unintended/unknown consequences of aggressive statin tx. Does this study raise that question or not? I’m still unclear.

Enjoy!