[Comment] Product labels downplay the safety of statin therapy: evidence from randomised controlled trials

00:00 - 05 Feb 2026

Following the frequent suspicions regarding the safety of cholesterol-lowering drugs in the pre-statin era,1 statins have been a recurrent object of various concerns and alarming news. For example, during the 1990s, statins were even suspected to promote serious non-vascular outcomes, such as cancer.2 But after the clear-cut results of the Scandinavian Simvastatin Survival Study (4S), which showed the reduction of all-cause mortality in patients with coronary disease,3 and several large-scale clinical trials with corroborating evidence,4 concerns would have been expected to be silenced, but these concerns have persisted in cholesterol sceptics.