Statins do not cause 90% of occurrences of muscle pain.

Statins, which help lower cholesterol and have been proven to lessen the risk of heart attack and stroke, are administered to millions of Americans annually. Despite decades of evidence supporting the drug's safety and effectiveness, many patients still choose not to fill their prescriptions, with estimates putting the percentage of those who stop treatment within the first year at 40-75%.

Then why is there a problem? Many statins are already accessible in generic form; thus, the cost is not an issue. Instead, concerns about side effects, especially muscle soreness, stiffness, and cramping, are the primary reason people give for not taking statins.

However, a new study from Oxford Public Health reveals that statins are being wrongfully blamed for aches and pains that they are not causing. Over 90% of persons with muscular discomfort are not allergic to the drugs, according to an analysis of 23 placebo-controlled trials.

Muscle pain or weakness is joint in adults regardless of whether they take a statin tablet or not, according to an analysis published on August 29 in the Lancet and presented at the 2022 European Society of Cardiology Congress. The study found that in 14 of 15 reported cases, muscle pain or weakness was not due to statin therapy and that the cases occurred primarily within the first year of treatment.

The benefits of statin therapy likely outweigh the worries of muscle discomfort, according to the study's co-author and director of the Medical Research Council Population Health Research Unit at the University of Oxford, Colin Baigent. He said that skewed data collection and interpretation were to blame for the findings showing statins cause more muscle discomfort.

Statin therapy is an essential tool in preventing heart attack and stroke. Still, cardiologist and director of the Statin Intolerance Clinic at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, Stephen Kopecky, MD, who was not involved in this study, disagrees that the side effects that people experience during statin therapy are "inconsequential" or "insignificant."

"Because if we do that, we are telling patients that what they feel isn't real. According to Dr. Kopecky, "statin intolerance is real."

Over Forty Million People in the U.S. Use Statins:

About 40 million Americans take statins to control their cholesterol levels, making them the country's most widely used class of medications. Evidence suggests that lowering LDL cholesterol with these drugs can lessen the likelihood of a stroke or heart attack. According to the Cleveland Clinic, high cholesterol levels are associated with arterial plaque, which reduces blood flow.

An estimated 696,962 people in the United States lose their lives to heart-related causes such as heart attacks and strokes.

Statistics show that muscle-related symptoms are "slightly" higher in patients using statins. Data from 23 large-scale randomized studies from the Cholesterol Treatment Trialists' Collaboration, containing information from approximately 155,000 individuals, were pooled to examine the impact of statin medication on muscular complaints across a wide range of patients.

Among the most important results of the study were:

Nevertheless, most trial participants who were given a placebo tablet experienced muscle symptoms, such as muscle discomfort or weakening. Such signs were reported by about the same percentage of patients in the statin group (27.1%) and the placebo group (26.6%) across 19 statin medication versus placebo trials.

When statins were used, muscle-related complaints occurred slightly more often. About 14 out of 15 reports of muscular discomfort in persons using statins could not be linked to statins, which dropped to about 9 out of 10 among those taking high-dose statins. Over 90% of those who report muscular soreness do not have a statin-related etiology.

People using statins were more likely to experience muscle complaints throughout the first year of medication. Low or moderate-dose statin medication did not increase the frequency of muscle complaints after the first year of treatment initiation.

Although the authors did not find evidence linking the statin dose and muscle symptoms, they did find that higher intensity or higher dose statin treatments were more likely than low or moderate intensity statin treatments to increase the risk of muscle symptoms, with some persistent effect after the first year.

Helene Glassberg, MD, a cardiologist at Penn Medicine in Philadelphia, notes that patients frequently express worries about statins due to anecdotal information from friends and relatives who didn't tolerate them. "Pain is prevalent, and statin use is blamed too much for it.