Strong Link Between Statin Drugs and Diabetes
In
a study of nearly 26,000 beneficiaries of Tricare, the military health system,
cholesterol-lowering drugs statins have been found to increase the risk of
developing diabetes. The study, published in the Journal of General Internal
Medicine, confirms past findings on the link between the widely prescribed
drugs and diabetes risk. The study included only people who at baseline were
free of heart disease, diabetes and other severe chronic disease, is among the
first to show the connection in a relatively healthy group of people.
The
researchers examined patient records for the period between October 2003 and
March 2012.
Statin
drugs are the all-time leading prescription drugs sold around the world,
prescribed by doctors to lower people’s cholesterol levels. While the side
effects are a serious concern, there are also concerns that statin drugs have
no therapeutic value either. Studies have never conclusively proven that
lowering one’s cholesterol levels by medication increases one’s life span. In
fact, there is evidence to the contrary, that higher cholesterol levels are
associated with longer life spans.
Some
eye-opening findings are:
1. Among
3,351 pairs of similar patients-part of the overall study group-those patients
on statins were 250 percent more likely than their non-statin-using
counterparts to develop diabetes with complications.
2. Statin
users were also 14 percent more likely to become overweight or obese after
being on the drugs.
3. Higher
the dose of any of the statins, the greater the risk of diabetes, diabetes
complications, and obesity.
4. About
three-quarters of the statin prescriptions in Mansi's data were for
simvastatin, sold as Zocor.
Using
two different techniques for data analayis, namely a) propensity
score matching where out of the total study population, the researchers chose
3,351 statin users and paired them with non-users who were very similar, at
baseline, based on array of 42 health and demographic factors. The only
substantial difference, from a research standpoint, was the use of statins.
This helped the researchers isolate the effects of the drugs, b) looking at
the overall comparison between the study's roughly 22,000 nonusers and 4,000
users, and statistically adjusting for certain factors. The researchers found a
similar outcome: Users of statins were more than twice as likely to develop
diabetes.
The
authors conclude as “Diabetes, diabetic complications, and overweight/obesity
were more commonly diagnosed among statin-users than similar nonusers in a
healthy cohort of adults. This study demonstrates that short-term clinical
trials might not fully describe the risk/benefit of long-term statin use for
primary prevention.”
Article citation: Mansi, I.;
et. al. Statins and New-Onset Diabetes Mellitus and Diabetic Complications: A
Retrospective Cohort Study of US Healthy Adults. Journal of General Internal
Medicine, 2015; DOI: 10.1007/s11606-015-3335-1
