Statins don’t lead to aches and pains

Landmark study finds ‘side effects’ are just old age

STATINS have been wrongly blamed for muscle pains that are a really a symptom of old age, a study concludes today.

Millions are put off the life-saving pills by claims that they commonly cause aches and pains.

But University of Oxford researchers have shown ‘definitively’ that warnings about the potential sideeffect are unfounded.

They say people’s complaints are largely ordinary niggles often the result of ageing or being too active.

The ‘gold standard’ study, published in The Lancet, involved 155,000 patients and found an almost identical risk of muscle pain in people not taking statins.

Those on the cholesterol-lowering drugs had a 27.1 per cent chance of suffering an ache, compared with 26.6 per cent given dummy pills. Neither the patients nor their doctors knew which they had been given to ensure the results were not biased.

Analysis revealed the pills, which cost 4p a day, caused muscle pain in only one in 100 users and 14 out of 15 reported cases of muscle pain were due to something else.

Four in ten adults are eligible for the drugs, including all over-75s, most over-60s and those in middle age with conditions such as diabetes. But only around 8million take them, meaning millions miss out on their power to prevent heart attacks and strokes.

Around half of patients stop taking them, with many blaming muscle pain.

Professor Colin Baigent, the study’s lead author and director of the Population Health Research Unit at the University of Oxford, said the ‘monumental’ research showed that for most ‘the potential benefits of statin therapy are likely to outweigh the muscle pain risks’.

He added: ‘We believe there is a need to revise the information in the medication label for statins.’

Researchers obtained data from 30 years of trials, persuading those involved to hand over 38million records. They then focused on 23 large trials, involving at least 1,000 patients each.

Professor Sir Nilesh Samani, of the British Heart Foundation, which co-funded the study, said the findings debunked the myth that statins are a common cause of muscle pain.

The study was presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in Barcelona.