Basis for many drugs flawed? I’ve mentioned before the idea of using surrogate end markers in studies to say a drug is effective. Basically, we ASSUME that if a marker (like blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, A1C, plaguing in the carotid arteries in the neck or HDL level) gets better, then we jump up and down and say the drug is effective and we’re saving lives. Perfect example is statin class of drugs and cholesterol. Looking at the numbers of actually preventing cardiac deaths, statins really suck, but they ARE good at lowering cholesterol!!
The bottom line is that the only way to ensure that an improved marker will lower your risk of something is to do it with lifestyle. Anything else may kill you faster than it saves you.
