Adverse side effects may stop up to 75% of patients from continuing with statin treatment

This study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association 2002 Jul 24-31;288(4):462-7

Study title and authors:

Adherence with statin therapy in elderly patients with and without acute coronary syndromes.

Jackevicius CA, Mamdani M, Tu JV.

Department of Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation, Pharmacy Department and Women's Health Program, University Health Network-Toronto General Hospital, 200 Elizabeth St, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5G 2C4. Cynthia.Jackevicius@uhn.on.ca

This study can be accessed at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12132976

This study was designed to compare 2-year adherence rates of statin prescriptions in 3 groups of patients. All patients were over 65 years old.

The groups were:
(i) Those with recent acute coronary syndrome. (Heart attack and unstable angina) (22,379)
(ii) Those with chronic coronary artery disease. (36,106)
(iii) Those without coronary disease. (85,020)

The adherence rates were:
(i) 40.1% in the acute coronary syndrome group.
(ii) 36.1% in the chronic coronary artery disease group.
(iii) 25.4% in those without coronary disease.

The very high dropout rate of these diverse groups of patients taking statins, suggests that a large percentage of them would have suffered from some of the myriad side effects of statins.

Links to other studies:
Even brief exposure to statins causes muscle damage
Statin treatment increases cardiovascular diseases in diabetics by 31%
Women should not be prescribed statins as they fail to provide any overall health benefit