- statins have a measurable effect on HDL and LDL levels that correlates really well with how much they reduce your risk of dying, and that risk reduction is real and big.
- therefore HDL/LDL levels shall be a great surrogate metric for new drugs; let's go find some.
- we found this great drug that does even better than statins do at HDL/LDL level changes
- two years and 12k patients in trials later: this new drug doesn't affect mortality literally at all.
tldr:
- statins have a measurable effect on HDL and LDL levels that correlates really well with how much they reduce your risk of dying, and that risk reduction is real and big.
- therefore HDL/LDL levels shall be a great surrogate metric for new drugs; let's go find some.
- we found this great drug that does even better than statins do at HDL/LDL level changes
- two years and 12k patients in trials later: this new drug doesn't affect mortality literally at all.
- ...crap.