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 20 November 2015

Statins can increase the risk of shingles infection

This study was published in the European Journal of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases 2015 Jul;34(7):1451-8

Study title and authors:
Statins can increase the risk of herpes zoster infection in Asia.
Chen HH, Lin CL, Yeh CJ, Yeh SY, Kao CH.
Institute of Medicine and Public Health, Chung Shan Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan.

This study can be accessed at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25864192

This study evaluated whether statin therapy increases the risk of herpes zoster (shingles). The study included 53,069 patients receiving statin therapy and 53,069 patients without statin therapy who were followed for more than 4.5 years.

The study found:
(a) Patients taking statins had a 21 % higher risk of contracting shingles than the patients not taking statins.
(b) Patients taking higher dose statins had more than 150% higher risk of contracting shingles than the patients not taking statins.

Chen concluded: "Statin therapy can increase herpes zoster (shingles) infection."


 
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