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 14 February 2012

Rising diarrhea rates linked to statins

This paper was published in Medical Hypotheses 2009 Dec;73(6):1045-7. Epub 2009 Aug 4

Study title and authors:
Clinically important interaction between statin drugs and Clostridium difficile toxin?
McGuire T, Dobesh P, Klepser D, Rupp M, Olsen K.
College of Pharmacy, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE 68198-6045, United States. trmcguir@unmc.edu

This paper can be accessed at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19656639

Clostridium difficile associated disease (CDAD), a common type of antibiotic associated diarrhea, is increasing in frequency and is now occurring more commonly in younger patients who are relatively healthy and may not be receiving antibiotics.

This paper investigated the factors which may have caused the rise in Clostridium difficile associated disease and found:
  • Gastric acid suppression, particularly via proton pump inhibitors (Losec, Prevacid, Nexium, Kapidex) is a risk factor for the development of Clostridium difficile associated disease.
  • A statin trial demonstrated an increased rate of Clostridium difficile associated disease in patients receiving statins compared to non-statin controls.

Mcguire concludes that the weight of the evidence leads to the hypothesis that statins interact with Clostridium difficile toxin causing an increase in the rate and severity of Clostridium difficile associated disease (diarrhea).