HEALTHY DIETS AND SCIENCE: Statins cause muscular pain

The raison d'etre of this website is to provide you with hard scientific information which may help you make informed decisions in your quest for health (so far I have blogged concise summaries of over 1,500 scientific studies and have had three books published).

My research is mainly focused on the effects of cholesterol, saturated fat and statin drugs on health. If you know anyone who is worried about their cholesterol levels and heart disease, or has been told to take statin drugs you could send them a link to this website, and to my statin or cholesterol or heart disease books.

David Evans

Independent Health Researcher

Tuesday, 27 July 2010

Statins cause muscular pain

This post includes a summary of a study published in the Journal of Clinical Pharmacy and Therapeutics Volume 26 Issue 4, Pages 303 - 310

Study title and authors:
Isoprostane 8-epi-PGF2α is frequently increased in patients with muscle pain and/or CK-elevation after HMG-Co-enzyme-A-reductase inhibitor therapy
H. Sinzinger 1,2 , G. Lupattelli 3 , F. Chehne 1 , A. Oguogho 1 * & C. D. Furberg 4

Books:

1 Department of Nuclear Medicine, University of Vienna, Austria 2 Institute for Diagnosis and Treatment of Lipid Disorders and Atherosclerosis (ATHOS), Austria 3 Institute of Internal Medicine, Angiology and Atherosclerosis, University of Perugia, Italy 4 Department of Public Health Sciences, The Bowman Gray School of Medicine, Winston Salem, North Carolina, U.S.A.

This study can be accessed at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11493374

Muscle pains with or without creatine kinase-elevation are among the most frequently observed side-effects in patients on various statins. This study sought to find the changes associated with this side-effect.

This study examined levels of isoprostane 8-epi-PGF2alpha, (high levels are a marker of cellular oxidation injury), (oxidation injury is damage that occurs to the cells and tissues of the brain and body by highly reactive substances known as free radicals), in patients who were taking statin drugs. The patients isoprostane 8-epi-PGF2alpha levels were measured at the start of the study, when muscle problems manifested and different time intervals after withdrawing the respective statin.

The study found:
(a) The majority of patients with muscular side-effects show elevated 8-epi-PGF2alpha levels.
(b) Stopping statin therapy resulted in a normalization of the values in all patients.

Professor Helmut Sinzinger from the University of Vienna, who headed the study, concluded: "These findings indicate a significant involvement of oxidative injury in the muscular side-effects of statins".
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