Thanks, Amanda, for sharing your concerns. I have to precede everything I say now with a caution: I'm a public health doctor, not a medical doctor, so please do not construct anything I say as medical advice.

Briefly, It would help to know the actual blood blood lipid values of your husband. If you want to share these data, maybe you would like to do so via my e-mail (lutz.kraushaar@adiphea.com) or via a direct message from my website www.adiphea.com (then I know it will get through my relatively strict spam filter). Looking at LDL alone is never correct. You need to see the HDL values to derive the ratio between the two. Also blood triglycerides are important. I get the impression from your remarks that LDL is not that high. With respect to the calcification it is important to know the CAC score if he had that examination done. Generally, while the bias is towards prescribing statins, the side effects are also often blown out of proportion by some of the people writing about them. The diabetes risk doesn't show up in all study populations, for example, it is still controversial. If your husband is not overweight, has normal fasting glucose and normal 2-hr post challenge glucose (IGT (impaired glucose tolerance test) done by your doctor?) then even the familial predisposition should not be of much concern. It is very important to always look at the absolute risk not the relative risks as they are the ones typically reported. E.g. A risk increase of 50% sounds like a lot, but of the aboslute risk is 1% then the 50% increase means an increase to 1.5%. That's a lot already for most side effects, as they are typically below that threshold.

So, we can't settle your concerns here, but we will get some more light into the matter, if I have more data. And your questions will certainly help me to cover the topic in my upcoming post.