Tag: statins

Statins and risk of poststroke hemorrhagic complications

~ BS

2016-03-28 13_00_38-Statins and risk of poststroke hemorrhagic complicationsEaster brought another publication, this time with the title

“Statins and risk of poststroke hemorrhagic complications”

I am very pleased with this paper as it demonstrates two important aspects of my job. First, I was able to share my thought on comparing current users vs never users. As has been argued before (e.g. by the group of Hérnan) and also articulated in a letter to the editor I wrote with colleagues from Leiden, such a comparison brings forth an inherent survival bias: you are comparing never users (i.e. those without indication) vs current users (those who have the indication, can handle the side-effects of the medication, and stay alive long enough to be enrolled into the study as users). This matter is of course only relevant if you want to test the effect of statins, not if you are interested in the mere predictive value of being a statin user.

The second thing about this paper is the way we were able to use data from the VISTA collaboration, which is a large amount of data pooled from previous stroke studies (RCT and observational). I believe such ways of sharing data brings forward science. Should all data be shared online for all to use? I do am not sure of that, but the easy access model of the VISTA collaboration (which includes data maintenance and harmonization etc) is certainly appealing.

The paper can be found here, and on my mendeley profile.

 

– update 1.5.2016: this paper was topic of a comment in the @greenjournal. See also their website

update 19.5.2016: this project also led to first author JS to be awarded with the young researcher award of the ESOC2016.

 

 

The protective effects of statins on thrombosis recurrence: a letter to the editor of the European Heart Journal

~ BS

Recently, Biere-Safi et al published the results from their analyses of the PHARMO database describing the relation between statin use and the recurrence of pulmonary embolism (pubmed). This article was topic of a heated debate on our department: is it really possible that statin use halves the risk of recurrence in this patient group? During this discussion we found some issues that could led to an overestimation of the underlying true protective effect. We described these issues in a letter to the editor which has been accepted as an e-letter. Some journals use e-letters to facilitate a faster and more vivid debate after a publication, but unfortunately, these e-letters are only to be found at the website of the publisher and not for example in Web Of Scienc or Pubmed. This could mean that these critical parts of the scientific debate could have a smaller reach, which is a pity.

Nonetheless, the text of our e-letter is to be found on the website of the Eur Heart J, or via my Mendeley account.