Researchers Propose Serving Free Cholesterol Drugs With Fast Food Meals

Thursday, August 12, 2010 - 15:28 in Health & Medicine

Would You Like a Statin With that Heart Attack? ebruli via Flickr A group of researchers at Imperial College London recently cross-referenced a couple of studies on heart health and have made an interesting recommendation to fast food outlets: rather than fries, each order should come with a free statin drug. A dose of statins, they reason, reduce heart attack risk to about the same degree that a cheeseburger and shake raise the risk. In effect, the two should neatly cancel each other out. In a paper recently published in the American Journal of Cardiology, the researchers point out that it's somewhat backward that fast food restaurants are giving away stuff that's horrible for you but that statins generally require a prescription. The cost of statins has fallen sharply in recent years such that a small statin dose would cost the vendors about the same as a packet...

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