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© KYODOKobayashi Pharmaceutical factory inspected over dietary supplement deaths, illnesses
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lunatic
Is there any scientific basis for this product?
odoriko
@lunatic - "A Review of Red Yeast Rice, a Traditional Fermented Food in Japan and East Asia: Its Characteristic Ingredients and Application in the Maintenance and Improvement of Health in Lipid Metabolism and the Circulatory System" -- ncbi nlm nih gov / pmc / articles / PMC8001704
Traditional it may be but (from the abstract)
in my opinion, "large scale commercial production" of supplement products opens up a whole can of germs and their byproducts.
HopeSpringsEternal
Makes sense, something changed in their production, probably due to trying to scale up too quickly, quality control, etc. Seems they had strong growing demand.
As many suffer high cholesterol, especially older folks, and many prefer an easy short-cut. Better to make dietary and lifestyle changes, than supplement risk.
Redemption
Plenty of good cholesterol lowering pharmaceuticals with minimal side effects including the old crestor of Shionogi which I never heard kills you.
virusrex
Lots of people have an irrational fixation with supplements and mistakenly believe that they are safer than actual medication, in reality they are much more loosely regulated, with unsubstantiated claims being common and unknown risks precisely because the companies do not have to prove safety as strictly as drugs have, if anything it is surprising this kind of problems is not more common.
Wick's pencil
Good question. But also, is there any scientific basis for needing to reduce cholesterol? Recent evidence suggests not.
Strangerland
Are there any reputable medical agencies recommending people not address high cholesterol as a problem?
indigo
cholesterol is good!!!
Wick's pencil
Higher LDL-Cholesterol is Associated with Greater Longevity
https://www.meddocsonline.org/annals-of-epidemiology-and-public-health/the-LDL-paradox-higher-LDL-cholesterol-is-associated-with-greater-longevity.pdf
Strangerland
Are there any reputable medical agencies recommending people not address high cholesterol as a problem?
wallace
High LDL cholesterol is the cause of heart attacks and strokes.
indigo
statin drugs are poison to stem cells
https://regenexxdesmoines.com/blog/statin-drugs-are-poison-to-stem-cells/
Strangerland
Are any reputable medical organizations therefore recommending abstaining from statins?
Raw Beer
You mean among those medical organizations that are directly or indirectly profiting from the sale of said statins?
virusrex
When the reported methodology do not include a way to control for survivor bias (nor immortal time bias for untreated control groups) the association can't be so simply assumed to be causal, it is more likely that the relationship can be explained simply because people at advanced age are more likely to have cholesterol problems the longer they live, with those that have more serious risk because of lack of control have been already selected against simply because they died before they could be included for comparison.
virusrex
Which recognized institutions of science in any country of the world support this claim you are making? obviously you can't expect people to believe everybody in the field is wrong without presenting actual evidence to demonstrate that extraordinary claim.
There have been many studies proving this, for example.
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2023/05/statins-cardiovascular-vessels.html
And specially they are studies that have been able to to resist post publication peer review, which is something above the ones that supposedly support the opposite conclusion.
https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-magazine/news/behind-the-headlines/cholesterol-and-statins
Raw Beer
What?! Instead of providing a peer-reviewed study, you just linked to an article written by a med school's news center promoting two of their studies: one on "lab-grown human endothelial cells" and the other on diabetic mice! Really?
Entuojo
Translation please.
Raw Beer
Basically, any study that goes against the pharma narrative is automatically hit by a wave of attacks from pharma-backed ankle biters. Some wrongly consider this "debunking", but it in fact just shows the power money has in controlling the narrative.
virusrex
The article does reference primary sources, and it is in no way the only that supports the scientific consensus, there is no importance about who writes a scientific dissemination article as long as it represents without problem the original sources, that excuse is something people try to use when they have zero arguments against those original sources when they prove the opposite of what they want to believe.
What is the well known term you have difficulty understanding?
If that were the case you could easily defend those articles, in reality this is a natural and desirable response against low quality studies that get destroyed when people with knowledge about the topic ennumerate the reasons why the conclusions are not sustained by the methods. This is easy to see the moment you are completely unable to refute even one of the reasons give for the criticism and instead use as an excuse an impossible to believe conspiracy theory involving every recognized institution of science of the world.
Entuojo
The entire sentence doesn't make sense pal.
virusrex
Again, if you have troubles understanding things that is not an argument to say those things don't make sense, another commenter replied to you and understood the comment, that means the problem is on your side.
Raw Beer
I understood what you wrote only because I am very familiar with your writing (style and content). And perhaps also because I have lots of experience reading English text from students with very low English skill.
Entuojo has a very valid point, it was very poorly written.
Raw Beer
I understood what you wrote only because I am very familiar with your writing (style and content). And perhaps also because I have lots of experience reading English text from students with very low English skill.
Entuojo has a very valid point, it was very poorly written.
virusrex
Judging from the votes three other people could understand the comment without problem as well, that still means the problem is with the person for which it made no sense, not the writting itself.
The point of course it that the post publication peer review is the minimum a report has to resist in order to be considered valid, when the only source you can bring do not even clear this very low hurdle that means you have no valid reference that can support your claim, meanwhile many examples do for the opposite side.