Doctors and Statin Drugs

Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Prescription Drugs

Physicians Often Ignore, Dismiss Patient Complaints About Possible Side Effects of Statins, Survey Finds

Physicians often ignore or dismiss patient complaints about possible side effects of statins, according to a study published last week in the journal Drug Safety, the Washington Post reports. For the study, researchers led by Beatrice Golomb, an associate professor of medicine at the University of California-San Diego, surveyed 650 patients, most of whom were in their early 60s and lived in the U.S.

Most participants said they complained to their physicians about muscle pain, memory loss, numbness in their hands and feet, or other possible side effects of statins, the study found. However, participants said in most cases their physicians attributed the symptoms to aging, denied their link with statins or dismissed them, according to the study. Golomb said, "Person after person spontaneously (told) us that their doctors told them that symptoms like muscle pain couldn't have come from the drug. We were surprised at how prevalent that experience was."

She attributed the results of the study in part to a lack of awareness about the side effects of statins. "Ad campaigns that preserve statins' miracle drug image are more powerful than education about side effects," Golomb said.

Implications
The study raises concerns about prescription drug safety because, when physicians fail to link symptoms with medications, they do not file adverse event reports with FDA. As a result, FDA might "underestimate the problem, and other doctors and patients may assume the drug is safer than it is," the Post reports.

Jerry Avorn -- a Harvard Medical School professor and author of the book "Powerful Medicines: The Benefits, Risks and Costs of Prescription Drugs" -- said that "there is horrendous underreporting of side effects," adding that 90% to 99% of "serious side effects are not reported by doctors."

The study "points out that doctor reports on side effects [are] a very unreliable means of learning about the true extent of problems," he said, adding, "We ought to have a (better) mechanism for gathering information from patients. A lot of it will be noise, but there may be important signals there as well" (Ganguli, Washington Post, 8/28).