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A meta-analysis informs that intolerance to statins, drugs used against excess bad cholesterol, is overestimated and overdiagnosed.
A study indicates that statin intolerance is overestimated. This drug is prescribed in case of excess bad cholesterol in the blood to avoid the over-risk of cardiovascular disease. But here it is: the treatment is sometimes poorly tolerated by patients, with side effects such as muscle, liver and digestive disorders, insomnia and headaches.
The meta-analysis, published on February 16, 2022 in the journal European Heart Journal, indicates that the researchers looked at several databases for studies that reported intolerance to statins. The scientists took into account 176 studies with more than 4 million patients.
Conclusion: by crossing all the data and analyzing them, they noticed that the overall prevalence of this drug intolerance was 9.1%. It would therefore be overestimated and overdiagnosed. Patients would be more likely to have heart and vascular health problems caused by too high a cholesterol level than to suffer from side effects related to taking the treatment.
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People at risk of side effects
“We have to assess patients’ symptoms very carefully” said the study’s lead author, Professor Maciej Banach, of the Medical University of Lodz and the University of Zielona Góra in Poland. “Firstly to see if these symptoms are indeed caused by statins. And secondly, to assess whether patients’ perceptions of the harmfulness of statins might in fact be responsible for more than half of all symptoms, rather than the drug itself. same”. This is called the “nocebo” effect.
The researchers point out that it is necessary for patients who present symptoms potentially linked to the use of statins to be carefully evaluated. In addition, there are certain risk factors for these side effects: being a woman, hypothyroidism, advanced age, drugs to control irregular heartbeats, calcium channel blockers often prescribed for chest pain and hypertension blood pressure, chronic liver or kidney failure, people of Asian origin, black people, obesity or diabetes, but also alcohol consumption.