The fundamental question is whether research with atorvastatin involving surrogate end points and planned but uncomplicated projects should influence physician prescribing patterns more so than published clinical outcomes research from randomized trials of pravastatin and simvastatin, with over 200,000 combined patient years of follow-up.
The published evidence base for atorvastatin in the years following our analysis has, indeed, become substantial. However, one may ask Dr Prigent how he would react if a new statin with 1/100th of the present evidence base of atorvastatin were now to claim more that 50% of the statin market share?