- Home>
- Specialties>
- General Medicine>
- Summary and Comment
Cardiovascular Benefits of Statins vs. Risk for Incident Diabetes
One additional case of incident diabetes occurred for every 255 patients who received statins for 4 years.
Does statin therapy raise risk for incident diabetes? When statins were compared with placebo (or usual care), mixed signals have emerged, with statins seeming to raise diabetes incidence in some trials and to lower it in others.
In a collaborative meta-analysis, investigators reviewed data from 13 trials in which 90,000 stable nondiabetic patients were randomized to receive a statin or placebo (or usual care) and were followed for a mean of 4 years. The rate of incident diabetes was slightly but significantly higher in patients who took statins than in those who received placebo or usual care (4.9% vs. 4.5%; odds ratio, 1.09). In absolute terms, one additional case of incident diabetes occurred for every 255 patients who received statins for 4 years. No variations in diabetes risk were noted among different statins. The association of statin use and incident diabetes was stronger in trials that involved older patients.
Comment: Although statins might cause one additional case of diabetes per 255 nondiabetic patients treated for 4 years, data from another meta-analysis indicate that statins would prevent five major coronary events in those 255 patients. Therefore, the authors recommend that risk for diabetes should not deter therapy with statins in patients at moderate-to-high cardiovascular risk, but they suggest that older patients who take statins be monitored for hyperglycemia.
Published in Journal Watch General Medicine March 4, 2010
Citation(s):
Sattar N et al. Statins and risk of incident diabetes: A collaborative meta-analysis of randomised statin trials. Lancet 2010 Feb 27; 375:735.
- Medline abstract (Free)
Reader Remarks:
Review and add to remarks on this article
- statin and diabetes
Sandeep Julka julka, India, 5 Mar 2010 1:04 PM EST
In a country like ours where the prevalence of Ty 2 DM is 20%(our study DRCP 2008 e4 to e7)... [more]
Your Remark:
To ensure that your Reader Remark is not formatted as one long paragraph, precede new paragraphs with either a blank line or an indentation.