Statins

[IT Minion]

Did the use of statins suddenly shoot up after the covid jab was released - asking for a friend

Pass this onto your friend.

Overview | Cardiovascular disease: risk assessment and reduction, including lipid modification | Guidance | NICE

www.nice.org.uk

 

[IT Minion]

I wonder if Statins cost the NHS much.

I have low chloresterol, but my GP likes to push it even lower.

Let's see the cost of a 28 day supply.

Pack Size
28 tablet
August 2025 Basic Drug Tariff Price:
£1.29
Price listed in the NHS Drug Tariff

Oh.

Not very much at all.

Drug Tariff Pro | Pravastatin 20mg tablets - November 2025

NHS Drug Tariff price of Pravastatin 20mg tablets for November 2025. See if it qualifies as a special container, has a concession price, or if a discount is not deducted. Drug Tariff Pro brings you the most comprehensive drug tariff information.

www.drugtariffpro.com

Apparently 5.3 million in the UK take them. So that would be £6.2 Million a month, or £82 Million a year!

More people are benefitting from NICE-recommended statins to reduce heart attacks and strokes

Around 5.3 million people in England were given a NICE-recommended statin or ezetimibe by their GP to help reduce their cholesterol during 2023/24, the largest number on record

www.nice.org.uk

Of course it'll be a bit higher as not everyone is on the cheap generics.

 

[Deleted member 317777]

Apparently 5.3 million in the UK take them. So that would be £6.2 Million a month, or £82 Million a year!

More people are benefitting from NICE-recommended statins to reduce heart attacks and strokes

Around 5.3 million people in England were given a NICE-recommended statin or ezetimibe by their GP to help reduce their cholesterol during 2023/24, the largest number on record

www.nice.org.uk

Of course it'll be a bit higher as not everyone is on the cheap generics.

So you’ve no idea of the actual cost then….

I’m sure all these doctors surgeries, that are private businesses want the commission from the cheap generic pills…. And not the expensive pills.

Yeah that all makes sense now. More made up facts….

 

[mrrusty]

It's a personal choice. Anecdotally:- my wife is a dental clinician and sees hundreds of people and has to ask their medical history of every one. She sees very few people my age who are not taking something, and those people without exception appear the most active and healthy. Some people take a shed load of medications, and they often appear to be the ones suffering ailments most.

Now you can say that the healthy people don't need medications and the sickest do, but surely if the medications worked the sicker ones would appear healthy? discuss!!!!

To those who recommend unequivocally taking suggested medications I also offer my own personal story.

I had bowel cancer - caught early - 7 years on it's history. But, when they replumbed me they took out some lymph nodes. If just one of those had tested positive I would have been offered adjuvant chemo. For one lymph node, I wouldn't have taken it.

Adjuvant chemo is there to mop-up any possible remaining rogue cells. - So, is there something still there or not? - a binary yes/no - 50:50 - 50% probability. If there is something there, is it a cancer cell type that the chemo can potentially destroy? another 50:50 so we're down to 25% probability of good outcome. Then there is 'even if there is something there and it is capable of being destroyed, it may or may not be successful', so now we're down to 12.5% probability of good outcome.

In fact, looking at bowel cancer nomograms from MSK hospital in the states (look it up) for my potential situation the improvement in outcome with/without chemo for one lymph node changed from 94% 5 year survival to 96% - a 2% increase/potential benefit.

The kicker though, is the particular chemo I would have been offered has a ~60% risk of some permanent neuropathy (finger/toe numbness) as a side effect. For me, the side effect risk would be greater than the benefit risk. In the end all lymph nodes were clear so I didn't have to make the decision.

The NICE pathway is a threshold that triggers a treatment if you cross it . The doctors are obliged to offer the pathway treatment and most people don't do their own risk/benefit analysis. Except, just about every single treatment available has both risks and benefits, and yet in my experience very very few people consider this in any detail.

As a final thought; the human race is varied. We are different colours, heights, weights, shapes - in fact we vary quite considerably. So why are some of the thresholds between good/bad the same for everybody?

Each to their own. Maybe my attitude will come back to bite me. Maybe not.

 

[IT Minion]

So you’ve no idea of the actual cost then….

I’m sure all these doctors surgeries, that are private businesses want the commission from the cheap generic pills…. And not the expensive pills.

Yeah that all makes sense now. More made up facts….

The bill for Atorvastatin was around £80,106,218.24 GBP in 2021, making it the 19th most expensive medication prescribed and almost the same as paracetamol at £79.2 Million

https://nhsbsa-opendata.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/pca/pca_additional_tables_2020_21_v001.xlsx

Statins are great value for money in terms of health improved per £ spent. But if you look through that spreadsheet it does become obvious how much of our drugs bill is spent on keeping old people alive longer. Perhaps there's a conversation to be had on how much we should be spending on old people now who didn't do the same for their own parents and grandparents.

 

[mrrusty]

But if you look through that spreadsheet it does become obvious how much of our drugs bill is spent on keeping old people alive longer. Perhaps there's a conversation to be had on how much we should be spending on old people now who didn't do the same for their own parents and grandparents.

I wish we had a "down arrow"....

 

[IT Minion]

Now you can say that the healthy people don't need medications and the sickest do, but surely if the medications worked the sicker ones would appear healthy? discuss!!!!

Dead people don't tend to go for Dental checkups.

Except, just about every single treatment available has both risks and benefits, and yet in my experience very very few people consider this in any detail.

You may be a unique and precious snowflake, but at a population level lots of very clever people spend a lot of time balancing exactly that.

The doctors job is to catch the exceptions, where the side effects are worse than the treatment itself. That's part of the pathway.

 

[IT Minion]

I wish we had a "down arrow"....

Oh it's an awful argument, but it's a response to (old) people who demand more and more money be spent on their care because 'they paid into the system their whole lives', despite paying for their own parents to have Ryanair service and demanding Virgin Atlantic first class for themselves.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

An update, following yesterday's appointment with the new doctor and surgery....

What a difference. I was given the most thorough check-over I have ever had, plenty of chat and discussion of my problems. She, the doc, was adamant that alternatives to statins, are not nearly as effective, and come with their own side-effects, she said she would be prescribing a different static, after some blood tests, in September.

From previous tests, on my patient record, she decided I was quite anaemic, and in need of iron. The anaemia, probably accounts for my total lack of stamina. She agreed with the hospital's suggestion, my low stamina level, was nowt to do with my CKD stage 5 issue. Now why didn't my previous surgery notice my iron levels were so low? The iron in the bloodstream, takes on oxygen in the lungs, and carries it to the muscles and tissue.

At the same time as the blood test, they want an ECG. A bit pointless really, as I volunteered to take part in some detailed heart research, just a couple of months back - heart stress test, both in and out of the MRI scanner, and they found no problems.

 

[mrrusty]

Perhaps there's a conversation to be had on how much we should be spending on old people

So the old person with a problem and a valid treatment available can choose to spend their own money if they are rich enough to have the treatment, whereas the poor old person has to rely on someone doing a cost/benefit analysis on them? Really the difference between NHS and the American "can't pay? tough s***" attitude...

Of course, to some extent you do have a point. As medical science advances, these moral decisions do get tougher. Once we can do complete head transplants onto different bodies........

 

[IT Minion]

So the old person with a problem and a valid treatment available can choose to spend their own money if they are rich enough to have the treatment, whereas the poor old person has to rely on someone doing a cost/benefit analysis on them? Really the difference between NHS and the American "can't pay? tough s***" attitude...

Of course, to some extent you do have a point. As medical science advances, these moral decisions do get tougher. Once we can do complete head transplants onto different bodies........

That's always been true. The NHS has a cut off of around £20-30k* (very approximate) of spending for each good quality year of life gained. If you spend that additional year in screaming agony then it's obviously worth less than one that makes you into a geriatric superman.

Some drugs work really well, but they cost so much that they'd suck down so much money they'd crowd out everything else.

* cancer treatment gets a much higher threshold because *shrug*. It's also different in some circumstances like if it's a cure rather than an ongoing treatment.

 

[blup]

Right now we're probably under prescribing them. Which isn't to say you should ignore any side effects or some people shouldn't have them despite meeting most of the criteria, but they cut heart attacks by 25%. That's huge.

There speaks an NHS policy man. If people carry on with poor diets or if they have naturally high cholesterol, fine. But don’t exclude those who change their habits but are still told you must take statins as the net widens

 

[denso13]

But don’t exclude those who change their habits but are still told you must take statins as the net widens

I don't think anyone is forced to, that's part of the scare story.

Some on here have been advised to take them but have said no.

 

[JohnD]

But don’t exclude those who change their habits but are still told you must take statins as the net widens

"Must?"

Nobody makes you.

You can take them if you want to reduce the risk of a stroke or heart disease.

At a cost of £1.29 a month.

Hmmmm.

Difficult choice, eh?

 

[IT Minion]

Adjuvant chemo is there to mop-up any possible remaining rogue cells. - So, is there something still there or not? - a binary yes/no - 50:50 - 50% probability. If there is something there, is it a cancer cell type that the chemo can potentially destroy? another 50:50 so we're down to 25% probability of good outcome. Then there is 'even if there is something there and it is capable of being destroyed, it may or may not be successful', so now we're down to 12.5% probability of good outcome.

That's not quite right, there's a a 1 in 2 choice for each of those, but it doesn't mean that it's a 50/50 chance.

Imagine you are walking along minding your own business and a looney tunes grand piano falls on your head from the top of a skyscraper. Either it kills you or it doesn't, A Binary yes/no. But I'm going to assume that your odds of living are far less than 50/50.

You're mistaking a Binary choice with a probability distribution. It's a fairly common thing, I think it's because of how our brains are wired.

Also, your example is one that's being actively researched now to see what level of treatment is needed. The NHS has tens of studies on cancer treatment to fine tune the length, timing, strength and use of chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery to work out if we can shave off another few % of fatalities.