Cholesterol Management Health Center
Statins May Raise Diabetes Risk in Older Women
Jan. 9, 2012 -- Use of cholesterol-lowering statin drugs may be associated with an increased risk of diabetes in middle-aged and older women, a new study suggests.
Experts say the evidence as a whole suggests that the risks are slight and that for most women who take statins, the benefits for preventing heart attack and stroke outweigh those risks.
Researchers analyzed data on nearly 154,000 women followed for an average of seven years.
Women who reported taking a statin such as Lipitor, Pravachol, Zocor, or other statin drugs were almost 50% more likely to report developing type 2 diabetes than women who did not take statins, according to study researcher Yunsheng Ma, MD, PhD, MPH, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
Statin Users Report More Diabetes
The study included 153,840 postmenopausal women with an average age at enrollment of 63. Most were followed for about seven years.
None of the women had diabetes when they were included in the study, but 10,242 cases of self-reported diabetes were found by the end of follow-up.
After taking into account older age, obesity, lack of physical activity, and other risk factors for diabetes, statin use was associated with an almost 50% chance of developing the disease.
Adults with diabetes are two to four times more likely to have heart disease or a stroke than adults without diabetes.
In fact, the American Diabetes Association recommends that in addition to lifestyle changes, all people with diabetes take a statin for cholesterol at a certain level whether or not they have heart disease.
Study researcher Annie L. Culver tells WebMD that recommendations should not change, but clinicians should also stress the importance of lifestyle in lowering heart attack and stroke risk.
“There is a tendency to believe that drugs are the only answer, when it is clear that eating well, exercising, and making other lifestyle changes are hugely important for lowering diabetes and cardiovascular risk,” Culver says.
New York University cardiologist Nieca Goldberg, MD, who specializes in treating women with heart disease, agrees that lifestyle is often overlooked when patients are placed on statins.
“Sometimes when people are on statins they think it is a license to eat anything they want,” she says. “This is certainly not the case, especially after menopause when women seem to have a harder time metabolizing sugar. That’s why I tell my patients to watch out for starches and sugar.”
Statin, Diabetes Risk Seen in Earlier Studies
It is not clear if statin use caused the increased risk or if the women who took statins shared some other unidentified risk for diabetes.
But the study is not the first to suggest that statins may raise the risk for diabetes.
An analysis of 13 studies, published in February of 2010, found that statin users had a 9% increased risk for diabetes. Another study, published last June, suggested a similar increase in risk among patients taking high doses of statins.
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