Patients may discontinue statin use unnecessarily, jeopardizing health benefits of therapy.
Doctors frequently prescribe statins to patients with high cholesterol. In research studies, statins are effective and well-tolerated. Few trial participants experience side effects such as tiredness and muscle aches, and even fewer stop taking their medication because of those side effects.
Conversely, in clinical practice, statins are commonly discontinued, and patients fail to experience the cardiovascular benefits of preventive therapy. Researchers studied medical records for patients receiving a statin prescription between January 2000 and December 2008 to investigate the reasons for statin discontinuation and the role of statin-related events (symptoms believed to have been caused by statins) in routine care settings.
Over the eight-year study period, more than one half of the patients discontinued their statin, at least temporarily. And approximately one fifth of those patients reported a statin-related event. One half of those patients were challenged to restart a statin, and more than 90 percent of them were taking a statin one year later, making it unlikely that they had true statin intolerance.
The author of an accompanying editorial notes that adherence could be an issue because patients are not accustomed to taking a drug every day for the rest of their lives. Regardless, he writes that better strategies are needed to promote statin adherence because statins can greatly reduce population prevalence of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.
doi:10.7326/0003-4819-158-7-201304020-00001