Statins Increases Risk Of Diabetes?

[chiang mai]

An interesting study in the link below concludes that certain brands of statins increase the risk of developing diabetes, apparently taking Crestor increases the risk by 18%. Given that I've been taking Crestor for five years and was recently diagnosed as Type II, there may be something to this, the study BTW involved 1.5 million people in Ontario.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2329834/Diabetes-warning-use-statins-People-drugs-increased-risk-developing-condition.html

[jrtmedic]

The Daily Mail is an unreliable source of health care information.

You will have noted they give no links to the original research.

The only "good" part of that article is the quote from Maureen Talbot, Senior Cardiac Nurse at the British Heart Foundation.

Who, said

:" 'Statins are taken safely by millions in the UK and protect those at high risk of developing coronary heart disease.

‘Although this study suggests an increased risk of older people developing diabetes when taking certain statins, other risk factors like being overweight, family history and ethnicity may have played their part.

‘There are benefits and risks with all medicines so if you’re worried, discuss your concerns with your GP. In the meantime, getting plenty of exercise and eating healthily will reduce your risk of developing both diabetes and coronary heart disease."

[chiang mai]

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-statin-linked-diabetes.html

"The study was published in BMJ, a journal of the British Medication Association. The work was done by researchers at Toronto General Hospital, the Institute of Clinical Evaluative Studies, Sunnybrook Research Institute and the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute".

Agreed re. The Daily Mail being an unreliable source of health care information, however, the DM in this instance is merely reporting the existence of the report rather than anything more. Above please see a further link to the study which doubtless can be googled and the report studied, for those so interested.

Edited May 24, 2013 by chiang mai

[jrtmedic]

Thank you for the link which provides a narrative. The most interesting to me is the following extract----

In an accompanying editorial, doctors from the University of Turku in Finland say that "the overall benefit of statins still clearly outweighs the potential risk of incident diabetes". They conclude that as statins have been shown to reduce cardiovascular events in patients, they "play an important role in treatment"

Edited May 24, 2013 by jrtmedic

[chiang mai]

Whilst acknowledging that the quoted information in your post is true, the more interesting quotes for me on this subject include:

"Patients treated with atorvastatin had a 22 per cent increased risk of new-onset diabetes, rosuvastatin an 18 per cent increased risk and simvastatin a 10 per cent increased risk, relative to pravastatin. In contrast, patients treated with fluvastatin were at a five per cent lower risk and lovastatin a one per cent decreased risk".

The benefit of the articles/study seems to be in the choice of statin rather than whether to take statins or not, that was the intended message at the outset.

[jrtmedic]

Percentages can be very misleading when dealing with very small numbers. I quote

"The overall risk of developing diabetes was low but this risk was increased among some patients taking statins. Between 162 and 407 patients would have to be treated with the various statins for one extra patient to develop diabetes. "

As an aside, thanks for provoking an interesting debate ! It makes a refreshing change from the "usual"!

Edited May 24, 2013 by jrtmedic

[partington]

The Daily Mail is an unreliable source of health care information.

You will have noted they give no links to the original research.

The only "good" part of that article is the quote from Maureen Talbot, Senior Cardiac Nurse at the British Heart Foundation.

Who, said

:" 'Statins are taken safely by millions in the UK and protect those at high risk of developing coronary heart disease.

‘Although this study suggests an increased risk of older people developing diabetes when taking certain statins, other risk factors like being overweight, family history and ethnicity may have played their part.

‘There are benefits and risks with all medicines so if you’re worried, discuss your concerns with your GP. In the meantime, getting plenty of exercise and eating healthily will reduce your risk of developing both diabetes and coronary heart disease."

The study is in http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f2610

It's a bit strange. They compare risk of various statins, not against a placebo or non-statin treated group, but against a group treated with pravastatin, a low potency statin that has been shown, as the authors themselves state, to decrease your risk of developing diabetes when compared to a placebo treated group.

So they are using a group of patients whose risk of developing diabetes has been lowered (by around 30% according to the West of Scotland Prevention Trial that used pravastatin as the test drug) compared to people taking no drug at all.

They then show that compared to this group atorvastatin and simvastatin groups have a very slightly higher incidence of new onset diabetes (the rosuvastatin data is not convincing), and fluvastatin and lovastatin do not have any increased risk. This means that compared to people who are protected against diabetes by taking pravastatin, people taking some other statins have a higher risk.

It does NOT mean that people taking these statins have a higher risk of developing diabetes compared to a group of normal people taking no statins at all!

The increases in risk are quite small - for 1000 patients taking statins for a year, 23 of the pravastatin group would develop diabetes, but it would be 26 for simvastatin and 31- 34 for atorvastatin/rosuvastatin.

So it makes absolute sense to take notice of this study and reduce the small risk of certain types of statin by prescribing safer ones, but it is quite wrong to suggest that this study shows that these so-called riskier statins increase your risk of diabetes compared to someone taking no statin at all!

[jrtmedic]

Absolutely right ! I agree ---- Then comes the thorny question of cost/benefit

The researchers also dont seem to have accounted for the many other reasons a person may develop Type II diabetes !

Edited May 24, 2013 by jrtmedic

[partington]

To be fair, they do mention that as a weakness themselves at the end there...

[jrtmedic]

To be fair I agree !

[Sheryl]

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-statin-linked-diabetes.html

"The study was published in BMJ, a journal of the British Medication Association. The work was done by researchers at Toronto General Hospital, the Institute of Clinical Evaluative Studies, Sunnybrook Research Institute and the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute".

Agreed re. The Daily Mail being an unreliable source of health care information, however, the DM in this instance is merely reporting the existence of the report rather than anything more. Above please see a further link to the study which doubtless can be googled and the report studied, for those so interested.

Please note Health Forum rule #4

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/224498-health-forum-rules/

One of the reasons for this rule is that members seldom post actual research but rather mass media articles which frequently mis-report the actual findings....as in this case.

Thread closed.