IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/hepoli/v120y2016i7p797-808.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The 2013 cholesterol guideline controversy: Would better evidence prevent pharmaceuticalization?

Author

Listed:
  • Unruh, Lynn
  • Rice, Thomas
  • Rosenau, Pauline Vaillancourt
  • Barnes, Andrew J.

Abstract

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains the leading cause of death globally. A class of medications, known as statins, lowers low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels, which are associated with CVD. The newest 2013 U.S. cholesterol guideline contains an assessment of risk that greatly expands the number of individuals without CVD for whom statins are recommended. Other countries are also moving in this direction. This article examines the controversy surrounding these guidelines using the 2013 cholesterol guidelines as a case study of broader trends in clinical guidelines to use a narrow evidence base, expand the boundaries of disease and overemphasize pharmaceutical treatment.

Suggested Citation

  • Unruh, Lynn & Rice, Thomas & Rosenau, Pauline Vaillancourt & Barnes, Andrew J., 2016. "The 2013 cholesterol guideline controversy: Would better evidence prevent pharmaceuticalization?," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 120(7), pages 797-808.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:hepoli:v:120:y:2016:i:7:p:797-808
    DOI: 10.1016/j.healthpol.2016.05.009
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168851016301257
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.healthpol.2016.05.009?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gerard van den Berg & Gabriele Doblhammer-Reiter & Kaare Christensen, 2011. "Being Born Under Adverse Economic Conditions Leads to a Higher Cardiovascular Mortality Rate Later in Life: Evidence Based on Individuals Born at Different Stages of the Business Cycle," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 48(2), pages 507-530, May.
    2. De Vries, Raymond & Lemmens, Trudo, 2006. "The social and cultural shaping of medical evidence: Case studies from pharmaceutical research and obstetric science," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(11), pages 2694-2706, June.
    3. Lexchin, Joel & O'Donovan, Orla, 2010. "Prohibiting or 'managing' conflict of interest? A review of policies and procedures in three European drug regulation agencies," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 70(5), pages 643-647, March.
    4. Bell, Susan E. & Figert, Anne E., 2012. "Medicalization and pharmaceuticalization at the intersections: Looking backward, sideways and forward," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 75(5), pages 775-783.
    5. Brody, H. & Light, D.W., 2011. "The inverse benefit law: How drug marketing undermines patient safety and public health," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 101(3), pages 399-404.
    6. Busfield, Joan, 2010. "'A pill for every ill': Explaining the expansion in medicine use," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 70(6), pages 934-941, March.
    7. Peter C Gøtzsche & Asbjørn Hróbjartsson & Helle Krogh Johansen & Mette T Haahr & Douglas G Altman & An-Wen Chan, 2007. "Ghost Authorship in Industry-Initiated Randomised Trials," PLOS Medicine, Public Library of Science, vol. 4(1), pages 1-6, January.
    8. Raymond N Moynihan & Georga P E Cooke & Jenny A Doust & Lisa Bero & Suzanne Hill & Paul P Glasziou, 2013. "Expanding Disease Definitions in Guidelines and Expert Panel Ties to Industry: A Cross-sectional Study of Common Conditions in the United States," PLOS Medicine, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(8), pages 1-12, August.
    9. Pollock, Anne & Jones, David S., 2015. "Coronary artery disease and the contours of pharmaceuticalization," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 221-227.
    10. Susan L Norris & Haley K Holmer & Lauren A Ogden & Brittany U Burda, 2011. "Conflict of Interest in Clinical Practice Guideline Development: A Systematic Review," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(10), pages 1-6, October.
    11. Sismondo, Sergio, 2008. "How pharmaceutical industry funding affects trial outcomes: Causal structures and responses," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(9), pages 1909-1914, May.
    12. Susan L Norris & Haley K Holmer & Lauren A Ogden & Brittany U Burda & Rongwei Fu, 2013. "Conflicts of Interest among Authors of Clinical Practice Guidelines for Glycemic Control in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(10), pages 1-1, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Cristina Morciano & Vittorio Basevi & Carla Faralli & Michele Hilton Boon & Sabina Tonon & Domenica Taruscio, 2016. "Policies on Conflicts of Interest in Health Care Guideline Development: A Cross-Sectional Analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(11), pages 1-24, November.
    2. Gabe, Jonathan & Chamberlain, Kerry & Norris, Pauline & Dew, Kevin & Madden, Helen & Hodgetts, Darrin, 2012. "The debate about the funding of Herceptin: A case study of ‘countervailing powers’," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 75(12), pages 2353-2361.
    3. Padamsee, Tasleem Juana, 2011. "The pharmaceutical corporation and the 'good work' of managing women's bodies," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 72(8), pages 1342-1350, April.
    4. Sobo, Elisa J., 2017. "Parent use of cannabis for intractable pediatric epilepsy: Everyday empiricism and the boundaries of scientific medicine," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 190(C), pages 190-198.
    5. Fisher, Jill A. & Cottingham, Marci D. & Kalbaugh, Corey A., 2015. "Peering into the pharmaceutical “pipeline”: Investigational drugs, clinical trials, and industry priorities," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 322-330.
    6. Ozieranski, Piotr & McKee, Martin & King, Lawrence, 2012. "The politics of health technology assessment in Poland," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 108(2), pages 178-193.
    7. Sismondo, Sergio, 2008. "How pharmaceutical industry funding affects trial outcomes: Causal structures and responses," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(9), pages 1909-1914, May.
    8. Nadine Desrochers & Adèle Paul‐Hus & Jen Pecoskie, 2017. "Five decades of gratitude: A meta‐synthesis of acknowledgments research," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 68(12), pages 2821-2833, December.
    9. S Scott Graham & Zoltan P Majdik & Dave Clark & Molly M Kessler & Tristin Brynn Hooker, 2020. "Relationships among commercial practices and author conflicts of interest in biomedical publishing," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(7), pages 1-11, July.
    10. Gérard Mondello, 2020. "Building Belief Systems and Medical Ethics: The Covid-19 Controversies," GREDEG Working Papers 2020-35, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
    11. Sonia Bhalotra & Samantha Rawlings, 2013. "Gradients of the Intergenerational Transmission of Health in Developing Countries," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(2), pages 660-672, May.
    12. Gabriele Doblhammer & Gerard J van den Berg & Thomas Fritze, 2013. "Economic Conditions at the Time of Birth and Cognitive Abilities Late in Life: Evidence from Ten European Countries," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(9), pages 1-12, September.
    13. van den Berg, Gerard J. & Pinger, Pia R., 2016. "Transgenerational effects of childhood conditions on third generation health and education outcomes," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 103-120.
    14. Dew, Kevin & Norris, Pauline & Gabe, Jonathan & Chamberlain, Kerry & Hodgetts, Darrin, 2015. "Moral discourses and pharmaceuticalised governance in households," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 272-279.
    15. Başaran, Oyman, 2020. "“The self-making of the scientific circumciser (fenni sünnetçi):” the medicalization of male circumcision in Turkey," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 265(C).
    16. Ocaña-Riola, Ricardo & Martín-Olmedo, Piedad & Maroto-Navarro, Gracia & García-Calvente, María Del Mar & Mayoral-Cortés, José María & Ruiz-Fernández, Josefa & Sánchez-Cruz, José Juan, 2017. "Impact of the Great Recession in the Social Welfare Indicators Related to the Labour Market in Andalusia /Impacto de la Gran Recesión en los indicadores de bienestar social relacionados con el mercado," Estudios de Economia Aplicada, Estudios de Economia Aplicada, vol. 35, pages 245-262, Enero.
    17. Pavlova, Milena & Hendrix, Marijke & Nouwens, Elvira & Nijhuis, Jan & van Merode, Godefridus, 2009. "The choice of obstetric care by low-risk pregnant women in the Netherlands: Implications for policy and management," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 27-34, November.
    18. Gary Yeung & Gerard Berg & Maarten Lindeboom & France Portrait, 2014. "The impact of early-life economic conditionson cause-specific mortality during adulthood," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 27(3), pages 895-919, July.
    19. Mamo, Laura & Epstein, Steven, 2014. "The pharmaceuticalization of sexual risk: Vaccine development and the new politics of cancer prevention," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 155-165.
    20. Lisa Bero, 2018. "Meta-research matters: Meta-spin cycles, the blindness of bias, and rebuilding trust," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(4), pages 1-4, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:hepoli:v:120:y:2016:i:7:p:797-808. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu or the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/healthpol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.