Statin drugs – designed to protect against heart disease by lowering cholesterol – are killers, and accelerate cardiovascular problems, a damning new report has discovered.
The drugs harden the main arteries, they are a main cause of type 2 diabetes in healthy people, and they accelerate the major health problems in diabetics, say researchers from the Phoenix Veterans Affairs’ Healthcare System. In short, the drugs help cause heart disease and death.
They monitored the health of 197 patients with type 2 diabetes and their use of statins. Coronary artery hardening, or calcification, was far more accelerated in the patients who were regular statin users compared to those who took the drugs only occasionally.
Patients who weren’t initially taking a statin quickly developed aortic artery hardening once they started taking the drug regularly.
The researchers fear their latest discoveries are but the tip of an iceberg of statin-associated adverse effects. Their database lists 300 adverse effects, including the weakening of the heart and increasing the risk of type 2 diabetes by 48 per cent in post-menopausal women.
(Source: Diabetes Care, 2012; epublished ahead of print: PMID: 22875226).