This is one of the times when I find the whole reporting of risk to be very annoying In this context? In a public health scenario? An increase of 0.18% is HUGEhttps://twitter.com/justsaysrisks/status/1153088518383476736 …
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The risk increase is for a combined cardiovascular endpoint. Basically, heart attacks, strokes, and death That's a pretty serious combinationpic.twitter.com/5q2Zuypo4b
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The study looked at men who were being prescribed testosterone for age-related decline in the UK. Even though it's an emerging treatment, they found >15,000 people who'd taken these drugs
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They found that the rate of their combined endpoint went from 1.1% to 1.3% each year when you took the drugs
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Now, think about that for a second. This is a group of drugs that are ~already~ being prescribed to 10,000s of men in the UK
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Imagine that 100,000 men are prescribe the drugs and take them for an average of 5 years over the next decade
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That makes 500,000 person-years of drug-taking Now, we know that for every 1,000 person-years there are about 2 events (0.2%)
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That means that this drug will cause 500*2 = 1,000 heart attacks/strokes/deaths in the next 5 years That's pretty hugepic.twitter.com/LgvnqKstKp
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If a million people take the drugs for 5 years, they'll cause 10,000 events And on, and on
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The thing is, a risk doesn't need to be huge (21% increase!) to be massively impactful at the population scale End rant
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