Statins' heart benefits outweigh diabetes risk in pill-takers, study shows

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(CBS News) Researchers say the heart-health benefits obtained from cholesterol-lowering statins outweigh the potential risks that patients taking the pills may develop Type 2 diabetes.

Whether or not a person was at high-risk for diabetes already due to risk factors such as obesity or family history led to differences in disease rates in statin-takers, the researchers found.

For the new study, published in the August 11 issue of The Lancet, researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston analyzed data from an earlier trial of 17,600 men and women to see whether the risk of developing diabetes outweighed the benefits statin drugs provide for reducing risk against heart attack, stroke and or death.

Participants were given rosuvastatin, the generic name for AstraZeneca's Crestor. AstraZeneca funded the research.

People with just one risk factor for diabetes were 28 percent more likely to develop the disease if they took statins compared to a group of healthy control subjects, but people who did not have risk factors showed no significant increase in diabetes rates when taking the pills.

Even for patients with diabetes risk factors, the researchers found that they were 39 percent less likely to develop heart problems and 17 percent less likely to die over the course of the study. Participants who weren't at risk for diabetes saw a 52 percent drop in their chances of developing a cardiovascular disease, and were 22 percent less likely to die over the course of the study compared with the control group.

"We believe that most physicians and patients would regard heart attack, stroke and death to be more severe outcomes than the onset of diabetes, and so we hope that these results ease concern about the risks associated with statin therapy," study author Dr. Paul Ridker, director of the center for cardiovascular disease prevention at Brigham and Women's Hospital, said in a press release.

"It's hard to argue against statin use as most diabetes are treated with statins anyway," Dr. Tara Narula, cardiologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City who was not involved with the study, wrote in an emailed statement to HealthPop. "Overall the message is that statins definitely have a role in primary prevention along with lifestyle changes."

However Dr. Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute in La Jolla, Calif., told USA Today that statins are still overprescribed to people who don't need them, and the study's findings don't change that.

"Per 100 people, you have two heart attacks less and one increase in diabetes," Topol said. "They're trying to say it benefits more than it harms. But the benefit is so small."

Previous research has found an increased risk for diabetes in people taking high doses of statins such as Lipitor and Zocor. A study last year found a 12 percent increased risk for such patients.

Then the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in February added warning labels to statins mentioning elevated levels of blood sugar, associated with diabetes, along with an increased risk for memory problems.

In an accompanying editorial published in the same issue of The Lancet, Dr. Gerald Watts, a professor of medicine at the University of Western Australia, concluded that, "All individuals on a statin who have major risk factors for diabetes, particularly impaired fasting glucose, need to be informed about the risk, monitored regularly for hyperglycemia, and advised to lose weight and take regular physical exercise to mitigate the emergence of diabetes."

[Concernedaboutstatins]

The risk analysis of statin vs new diabetes is specious. Diabetes increases cv risk. Statins cause more cases of diabetes and worsen existing diabetes. What is the net cv risk difference from this statin-diabetes link?

[nwbaby]

I agree- who paid for this study? I gave Statins the old college try for almost 20 years- how did it affect me? A bout of Archilles heel pain for about three years, flunked out of physical therapy, was due for surgery to cut the tendon and then to whittle away the bone and then reattach the tendon, but decided to stop Lipitor, and within two weeks the pain was gone! Next came Vitorin-ruined both my shoulders, and the pain never went away when I stopped. A couple of years later my doctor insisted I take Crestor- again the archilles tendon problem, which stopped when I stopped taking it but an added bonus-Hip replacement! Never again Statins for me!!

[BobBurnitt]

Boy is this a TIMELY one for ME. Just last week, I went to the doctor I go to and I told her that I thought I was DYING. I have been very sick for the last several years. I have auto-immune disease, I carry the HLA-B27 Gene and have type B POSITIVE blood. I have akylosing spondylitis, heart disease, three different ailments with my eyes, and scads of other maldies too numerous to mention. I am in, or HAVE been in PAIN for YEARS. The last few years I can feel my body just winding down getting ready to die. So I go to the doctor. I have TERRIBLE "preiphial edema", she tells me I have ALL of the symptoms of Comgestive Heart Failure and she sends me to the Cardio Vascular clinic across the street. The people there do an ultra sound of my heart and say, that I can leave, I am in no immediate danger considering what I have been through. So I go BACK to the doctor, I went to FIRST, she is VISIBLY SHAKEN that I did not go to the hospital in an AMBULANCE. So, I went HOME. Then I started researching all the drugs I take, I was on FOUR STATINS. Then I find out they CAUSE "peripheral edema" and DIABETES, and ALZHIMERS and they make you FEEL LIKE HELL, they make you feel SICK, they casue PAIN, DEPRESSION, there is just about NOTHING they DO NOT CAUSE. Three days LATER the doctor's office calls and says "You NOW have DIABETES!!!". NOBODY in my family has EVER had diabetes, NOBODY. I should be genetically VACCINATED against diabetes, in fact I have ALWAYS had LOW blood sugar. I QUIT taking those STATINS and in 48 hours I felt BETTER than I have felt in TEN YEARS!!!! WHAT is the POINT??? I do not get it at all. I have NO INSURANCE (I live in TEXAS) I have NOT had insurance since 1987, I have to pay for ALL of that stuff CASH up front!!! And it is KILLING ME!!! I do NOT want to EVER take those drugs AGAIN. Which is worse, BEING DEAD or WISHING you were DEAD??? The side effects from those drugs are AWFUL!!!! You know, my family (all of it) has been in this country over 300 years. I have traced my family tree back every which way. The men in my family ALL lived to be in there 80's, 90's and ALMOST 100 (if they did not get killed in a war or something like that) until the last couple of generations. Now they die in their 50's. I am 60, my father died when he was 57. I THINK it is becasue we have had our WAY of LIFE taken away by our idiot GOVERNMENT. All of my people were Farmers, Ranchers, and Dairymen until the GOVERNMENT RUINED all of that with "Keynesian Economics" in the 1930's. They destroyed AGRICULTURE and replaced it with SUSIDIZED AGRI-Business that has industrial CORN FACTORIES subsidized by the TAXPAYERS and they have to DUMP all of that HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP in all of our FOOD and that gawd awful ethanol in the gasoline to get rid of all of that subsidized CORN that is produced by AGRI-BUSINESS. They are RUINING our BODIES and our CARS with that stuff. Check it out!!! You know ONE of my Great Great Grandfathers was wounded FOUR times in the Civil WAR. He was shot through the arm, the heel, the HEAD, and through the LUNG and he lived to be 96. He NEVER took a statin. He never ATE ANYTHING that had HIGH fructose corn syrup in it and he NEVER took a SUBSIDY or a STATIN!!! He did not sit on his butt poking a computer all day either!! Google him up, he is on the internet, "Ervin Jasper Mears" was his name. Bob Burnitt Ellis County Texas

[IBBuckshot]

Great post. I stopped taking statins last March mainly because my legs got so weak I could hardly walk. My memory is also impaired and my HDL (healthy cholesterol) dropped sharply along with the LDL. The stuff works on one end but there are other important factors. I don't want to have a heart attack or stroke but would like to feel like I am alive. I feel like myself again without the statin and am more conscious about food and preparation.

[Saturn66]

Follow the money. Who paid for this study? Cholesterol is not the big boogie man the pharmaceutical industry would like us to believe. In fact for people over, say 55, the stats are inverse--the higher the cholesterol, the better the life expectancy. ALL of my health newsletters, all 4 by MDs, predict statins could be the next big scandal, right behind VIOXX. I'm guessing their sales dipped after the diabetes-statin link was publicized.