Increased exposure to statins in patients developing chronic muscle diseases: a 2-year retrospective study
While we’re on the topic of well accepted by the public but poorly represented in the literature we need to bring up the statin class of drugs. Despite the fact that every (I’m generalizing here…) primary care doctor in this country feels that “prevention” of heart disease means using a statin drug, the research on its efficacy for primary prevention of CVD is almost nil. As if this wasn’t bad enough, the research on the side effects slowly continues to mount.
This study looks at patients who have been diagnosed with chronic muscle disease (polymyositis, dermatomyositis, etc..) and found that these patients had a much, much higher chance of having had exposure to statins (2.73 times the risk), and this risk went up even higher when these patients also had used proton pump inhibitors for control of stomach acid production.