DOCTORS IN DENIAL OVER DRUG SIDE EFFECTS

ISHANI GANGULI, WASHINGTON POST - On many online message boards and Internet chat rooms, anxious patients share details about the muscle pain and memory loss they have noticed since they started taking statins to lower their cholesterol. A new study suggests these people may be seeking validation for good reason: Some of their complaints might otherwise be going unheard. According to a survey of 650 patients published last week in Drug Safety, a peer-reviewed journal, doctors frequently ignored or dismissed patients' concerns about such side effects. The study suggests this pattern of reaction goes beyond statins to other drugs.

When doctors fail to recognize a patient's symptoms as drug side effects, more than that patient's care is put at risk. Because the doctor makes no "adverse event report" to the Food and Drug Administration, the regulatory agency may underestimate the problem, and other doctors and patients may assume the drug is safer than it is. . .

Tens of millions of people worldwide take statins such as Lipitor and Zocor. Many experts view them as something of a panacea for everything from stroke and cancer to arthritis, although they do pose a risk of side effects in some patients, ranging from muscle injury to liver and kidney dysfunction.

Survey respondents, recruited via Web solicitations and other advertisements, were in their early 60s on average and mostly from the United States. Some of the solicitations were placed on Web sites where patients had posted complaints, raising the possibility that respondents were more apt to have had side effects than the average patient. Most said they'd complained to their doctors about such possible side effects as problems with memory or attention, or tingling or numbness in their hands and feet.

According to experts, muscle pain and other side effects occur in up to 30 percent of statin patients, by some estimates, and often lead doctors to stop or change a prescription. But patients surveyed said their doctors rarely linked their symptoms to statins -- even when the symptoms were well-documented as side effects.

"Overwhelmingly, it was the patient that initiated that conversation" making the connection between the statin and their symptoms, Golomb said.