Evidence Review: Most Statin Users Won't Have Major Side Effects (2024)

FAQs

Do most people have no side effects from statins? ›

Not everyone who takes a statin will have side effects, but some people may be at a greater risk. Risk factors include: Taking multiple medicines to lower your cholesterol.

In general, statins are very well tolerated and about 85-90% of patients report no side effects.

What are the arguments against statins? One concern is statin side effects. Some people report muscle pain and weakness, which has been shown to affect about 10% to 15% of people who take statins.

So it made sense just to use them for people with high cholesterol,” explains Johns Hopkins cardiologist Michael Blaha, M.D. “But we've learned that they also benefit people with lower levels of cholesterol who are at a high risk of heart disease. So we now think of statins as risk-reducing drugs.”

Joseph A. Hill, M.D., Ph. D. The controversy in the United Kingdom started in 2013 when the British Medical Journal (BMJ) claimed statins were being overprescribed to people with low risk of heart disease, and that the drugs' side effects were worse than previously thought.

Lipitor (atorvastatin) is typically the first-line drug to treat high cholesterol because it has fewer side effects than other statins.

Rhabdomyolysis is the most serious adverse effect from statin use and is very rare (less than 0.1%). The most common risk factors for statin-related myopathy include hypothyroidism, polypharmacy, alcohol abuse and patients with multiple medical co-morbidities.

Diet and exercise can lower your cholesterol by about 20 to 30 percent . If home remedies, diet, and exercise aren't enough to get your LDL cholesterol to a safe level, medication is the next step in keeping your heart healthy. Medication can bring your cholesterol down even further, if needed.

Do the benefits of statins outweigh the side effects? ›

Weight changes. Although uncommon, some statins have been linked with a small amount of weight gain. However, the benefits of taking a statin far outweigh this potential side effect. It's important to maintain a healthy weight while taking your statin, to help protect your heart.

Statins help to reduce the level of 'bad cholesterol' in the blood, which leads to fatty deposits building up and hardening arteries, causing increased risk of heart attack, stroke and coronary heart disease – contributing to around 7% of all deaths in England every year.

Statins are widely and increasingly used in most European countries, although data on the extent of this are not generally available.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has recommended authorising Repatha (evolocumab) as treatment to lower high levels of cholesterol in the blood of people who are unable to control their cholesterol despite taking optimal doses of statins or who cannot take statins. It should be used in addition to a healthy diet.

Of the 2,444 doctors in the Medicare prescribing database, almost 37 percent received industry payments. Researchers found that physicians who didn't receive industry money prescribed brand-name statins at a rate of almost 18 percent. Those who did take money prescribed brand-name drugs at a rate of almost 23 percent.

World's largest study shows less than 10% suffer side-effects caused by the drug. As many as one in two patients stop taking statins, reduce the dose or take them irregularly because they believe the cholesterol-lowering drugs cause muscle pain and other side-effects.

The current recommendation is that you should be offered statins if: there's at least a 1 in 10 chance of you developing CVD at some point in the next 10 years. lifestyle measures, such as exercising regularly and eating a healthy diet, haven't reduced this risk.

The statin with the shortest median time‐to‐onset for MAEs was pitavastatin (14.0 days), followed by atorvastatin (24.5 days), rosuvastatin (30.0 days), simvastatin (38.0 days), pravastatin (43.0 days), fluvastatin (45.0 days), and lovastatin (48.0 days).