HEALTHY DIETS AND SCIENCE: Statin use increases the risk of osteoarthritis and joint pain by 26%

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

Friday 13 June 2014

Statin use increases the risk of osteoarthritis and joint pain by 26%

2013 May;345(5):343-8

Study title and authors:

Incidence of musculoskeletal and neoplastic diseases in patients on statin therapy: results of a retrospective cohort analysis.

Mansi IA, Mortensen EM, Pugh MJ, Wegner M, Frei CR.

Brooke Army Medical Center, Department of Medicine, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, Texas 78234-6200, USA. Iishak.mansi@us.army.mil

This study can be accessed at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22975580

This study was conducted to investigate the incidence of various musculoskeletal diseases in statin users and nonusers. The study included 12,980 statin users and 45,997 nonusers who were followed for four years.

The study found:
(a) Statin users had a 26% increased risk of osteoarthritis and arthropathy (joint pain) compared to non-users.
(b) Statin users had a 20% increased risk of dorsopathies (back or spinal pain), rheumatism (joint and connective tissue problems) and chondropathies (cartilage disease) compared to non-users.