"Statins are life-saving drugs used by hundreds of millions of people over the past 30 years. However, concerns about the safety of statins have deterred many people who are at risk of severe disability or death from a heart attack or stroke,” said lead author of the study, Christina Reith, Associate Professor at Oxford Population Health at the University of Oxford, UK, in a press release.
“Our study provides reassurance that, for most people, the risk of side effects is greatly outweighed by the benefits of statins,” she added.
For the study, researchers analyzed data from 23 randomized trials. Nineteen of the trials included close to 124,000 participants and compared statins with a placebo, while four trials compared higher-intensity statin therapy with less intensive treatment.
When reviewing side effects, the researchers found that those taking statins reported side effects at nearly the same rate as those taking a placebo. The findings suggest that statins do not cause the vast majority of side effects listed for statins, including cognitive impairment, sleep disturbance, memory loss, erectile and sexual dysfunction, dementia, weight gain, headache, nausea, fatigue, depression, and interstitial lung disease.
The researchers wrote that of 66 prespecified adverse outcomes, statins were only linked to a higher risk of four: abnormal liver transaminases, other liver function test abnormalities, urinary composition alteration, and oedema, but only in a very small proportion of patients.
Product labels may overstate the risks linked to statins, misleading both clinicians and patients, wrote the researchers in their study, adding that statin labels should be revised to support more informed, evidence-based decision making.
Sources: Science Daily, The Lancet