Statin therapy, widely used for cardiovascular risk reduction, has been associated with several potential adverse effects largely derived from non-randomised observational studies that are prone to bias. To evaluate whether these reported undesirable effects are causally related to statin use, data from the Cholesterol Treatment Trialists’ Collaboration were analysed to assess cardiovascular benefits and non-vascular adverse outcomes in 123,940 participants.
The study found that, in addition to known effects on muscle outcomes and diabetes, statin therapy was associated with small but statistically significant increases in abnormal liver transaminases (0.30% vs 0.22% per year; RR 1.41), other liver function test abnormalities (0.25% vs 0.20% per year; RR 1.26), urinary composition alterations (0.21% vs 0.18% per year; RR 1.18), and oedema (1.38% vs 1.31% per year; RR 1.07) compared with…
