Statin use for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease among healthy adults has been linked to an increased risk for diabetes, diabetes complications, and overweight/obesity in a new retrospective cohort study that tracked individuals in a database for an average of 6.5 years.
"Whereas the increased risk of diabetes with statins is well-known, the increased risk of diabetic complications has not been previously described," write the authors, led by Ishak Mansi, MD, from the department of medicine, Veterans Affairs (VA) North Texas Health System, Dallas.
They report their findings in the Journal of General Internal Medicine and note that these are among the first data to show a connection between statins and diabetes in a relatively healthy group of people.
"The risk of diabetes with statins has been known, but until now it was thought that this might be due to the fact that people who were prescribed statins had greater medical risks to begin with," said Dr Mansi in a VA statement.
The author of another recent study, which reported the largest risk yet seen for diabetes with statins, Markku Laakso, MD, from the University of Eastern Finland and Kuopio University, has urged caution when considering statin use in primary prevention.
"Statins are not meant to be a treatment for everybody. Especially in women, who are at a lower risk of getting cardiovascular disease, maybe we should be more careful when we start statin treatment?" he said in March, when his work was published.
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