Statins and Diabetes Risk
According to a new study, statins may up diabetes risk.
Researchers from the university of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, studied over 130,000 patients from Canada, US, and UK, who were put on cholesterol-lowering statin drugs after a stroke or heart attack from 1997 to 2011. The statin drugs included Crestor, Lipitor, and Zocor, at 10 mg, 20 mg, and 40 mg respectively. They considered all these dosages as high; anything less than 10 milligrams was considered to be low. Researchers found that 3,600 patients had developed diabetes within two years of taking the statin drugs.
Those taking the higher dosage were more likely to develop diabetes than those taking a lower dosage. Other studies found that the rates of death were the same no matter what the potency of statins were. Researchers say that physicians need to weigh the small increase in benefit against the greater increase in diabetes risk for such patients.
Statins have also been found to cause other health problems like kidney damage and rhabdomyolysis (rapid loss of muscle tissue). More….
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