People are more worried about severe muscular problems when taking statins than they should be: Such side effects are exceedingly rare, research published Thursday in the journal The Lancet Digital Health reaffirms. Heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, and statins can lower LDL cholesterol levels by as much as 60%, reducing a person’s risk of a heart attack or stroke.
Understanding Statin Side Effects
Less than half of the 50 million people in the United States who could benefit from statins use them, and up to one-third of people never fill their statin prescriptions. And it’s not uncommon for people to stop taking the drug soon after it’s prescribed: Research has shown that about 40% of people prescribed a statin quit taking the drug within three months.
British researchers developed a tool that can help doctors predict their patients’ risk of statin side effects, including muscle disorders. They include myopathy, a broad term for conditions that affect muscles and cause soreness, weakness and fatigue; myalgia, which refers to muscle pain; and rhabdomyolysis, a dangerous condition in which muscle tissue rapidly breaks down and toxins leak into the blood.
The new study, which used medical record data from nearly 6 million adults in the United Kingdom, found that only about 0.04% of people had a 10-year risk of statin-related serious muscle disorders above 10%. That’s even lower than previous figures, including from an American Heart Association report, which put the rate of myopathy at less than 1% and the rate of rhabdomyolysis at less than 0.1%.
Expert Insights
“Even if you increase that tenfold, that is still a very tiny risk,” said Dr. Bart Duell, a professor of medicine at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, who co-authored the AHA report but was not involved in the new research. The risk of muscular side effects “really isn’t a reason to not use statins,” he added.
Doctors can always take a person off a statin to see whether the side effects such as mild muscle pain go away or reduce the dose. Statins are not the only cholesterol-lowering drugs available. “Statin side effects get talked about as if it is a done deal, but a couple important points are that almost all of the side effects are dose-related. It’s not always a yes-or-no answer. Taking or even starting on a lower dose can minimize risk,” Duell said.
Original reporting: Dallas TX News (HLL/CB) — read the source article.
