Potency Of Statins Linked To Muscle Side Effects

A study from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, published August 22 online by PLoS ONE , reports that muscle problems reported by patients taking statins were related to the strength or potency of the given cholesterol-lowering drugs. Adverse effects such as muscle pain and weakness, reported to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) were related to a statin's potency, or the degree by which it typically lowers cholesterol at commonly prescribed doses. "These findings underscore that stronger statins bear higher risk - and should be used with greater caution and circumspection," said investigator Beatrice Golomb, MD, PhD, professor in the Departments of Medicine and Family and Preventive Medicine at the University of California, San Diego. Golomb teamed up with researchers from California-based AdverseEvents, Inc., using the company's software platform to conduct a detailed examination of statin side-effect data from the FDA's Adverse Event Reporting System (AERS). The study analyzed muscle-related adverse events linked to each of the major statin drugs in total of 147,789 AERS reports, gathered between July 2005 and March 2011. Looking at the most commonly used statins - both brand names and, when available, generic forms of the drugs - rosuvastatin, the strongest statin, had the highest rates of reported problems. This was followed by atorvastatin, simvastatin, pravastatin, and lovastatin.