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

Thursday, 10 March 2016

Congenital abnormalities in baby born to mother using lovastatin

This study was published in the Lancet 1992 Jun 6;339(8806):1416-7

Study title and authors:
Congenital abnormalities (VATER) in baby born to mother using lovastatin.
Ghidini A, Sicherer S, Willner J.

This paper can be accessed at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1350826

This paper reports the case of an infant born with many malformations after the mother used a statin during pregnancy.

(i) A woman was treated for five weeks with lovastatin, starting approximately six weeks from her last menstrual period.
(ii) The statin was discontinued when her pregnancy was diagnosed at 11 weeks' gestation.
(iii) A female infant was delivered by cesarean section at 39 weeks' gestation. The infant had a constellation of malformations termed the VATER association (vertebral anomalies, anus not developed properly, an abnormal connection between the oesophagus and the trachea with part of the oesophagus missing, and kidney, forearm and wrist abnormalities).
(iv) Her anomalies included a deformed chest, spinal deformity, absent left thumb, foreshortened left forearm, shortened left elbow, fusion of the ribs on the left, anomalies in the spine, deformed left forearm, and a narrow lower oesophagus.