[Half-baked global health idea based on a conversation with my doctor: earlier cholesterol checks and prescription of statins]
I’ve recently found out that I’ve got high (bad) cholesterol, and have been prescribed statins. What surprised me was that my doctor said that they normally wait until the patient has a 10% chance of heart attack or stroke in the next 10 years before they do anything(!) This seems crazy in light of the amount of resources put into preventing things with a similar (or lower) risk profiles, such as Covid, or road traffic accidents. Would reducing that to, say 5%* across the board (i.e. worldwide), be a low hanging fruit? Say by adjusting things set at a high level. Or have I just got this totally wrong? (I’ve done ~zero research, apart from searching givewell.org for “statins”, from which I didn’t find anything relevant).
*my risk is currently at 5%, and I was pro-active about getting my blood tested.
Surprisingly, globally, high cholesterol might kill 4m per year − 50% in emerging economies. I think OPP is looking into air pollution which kills 7m per year, so maybe this is indeed something to lookin into.
[Half-baked global health idea based on a conversation with my doctor: earlier cholesterol checks and prescription of statins]
I’ve recently found out that I’ve got high (bad) cholesterol, and have been prescribed statins. What surprised me was that my doctor said that they normally wait until the patient has a 10% chance of heart attack or stroke in the next 10 years before they do anything(!) This seems crazy in light of the amount of resources put into preventing things with a similar (or lower) risk profiles, such as Covid, or road traffic accidents. Would reducing that to, say 5%* across the board (i.e. worldwide), be a low hanging fruit? Say by adjusting things set at a high level. Or have I just got this totally wrong? (I’ve done ~zero research, apart from searching givewell.org for “statins”, from which I didn’t find anything relevant).
*my risk is currently at 5%, and I was pro-active about getting my blood tested.
Romeo Stevens writes about cholesterol here.
Companies like thriva.co offer cheap at home lipid tests.
Here are a few recent papers on new drugs:
https://academic.oup.com/eurjpc/article/28/11/1279/5898664
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0735109721061131?via%3Dihub
Cardiovascular disease is on the rise in emerging economies, so maybe it’d be competitive in the future.
Saturated fat seems to be a main culprit:
https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD011737.pub3/full
Public health interventions might be a fat tax:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_tax
https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD012415.pub2/full
Or donating to the Good Food institute on human health grounds.
Surprisingly, globally, high cholesterol might kill 4m per year − 50% in emerging economies. I think OPP is looking into air pollution which kills 7m per year, so maybe this is indeed something to lookin into.
Thanks for sharing. I’m adding this to my potential research agenda, kept here: https://airtable.com/shrGF5lAwSZpQ7uhP/tblJR9TaKLT41AoSL and https://airtable.com/shrQdonZuU20cpGR4