Some stores like to offer loss leaders to attract shoppers. This usually involves products like cereal, soft drinks, or facial tissue being sold at, or below, cost. Now supermarket chains are using the same tactic for the cholesterol-lowering drug atorvastatin. This prescription drug was originally sold under the brand name Lipitor for more than $100 a month. It is now available generically. Wegmans, a chain in the mid-Atlantic states, and Meijer, a chain in the Midwest, are offering free atorvastatin to shoppers with prescriptions for the drug.
Giving away prescription medications may be a good marketing strategy, but patients should be informed about where the generic atorvastatin comes from and what kinds of side effects this medicine might cause them. Many people have experienced muscle pain when taking a statin, as this person reports: “I took simvastatin until I started having serious neck pain. My doctor did not respond when I complained about it. So I read about side effects on the Net and stopped taking it.
“It was nearly a year before the pain went away completely, but I was just grateful that it finally did — though permanently disillusioned, because that was the second time I had to take myself off a drug because of side effects that a doctor poo-poo’d. I read somewhere that muscle damage from statins can sometimes be permanent.”
Other side effects of statins include high blood sugar or even diabetes, cataracts, nerve pain and even ALS. The most recent side effect reported is kidney damage with high-dose statins.
