Diabetes May Be Associated with Use of Statins
A new analysis confirms that statin therapy is associated with a significantly increased risk of type 2 diabetes and the reason for this, according to researchers, is partially explained by genetic variants near the gene encoding the HMG-coenzyme A (HMG-CoA) reductase protein.
The researchers, led by Dr Daniel Swerdlow (University College London, UK) and Dr David Preiss (University of Glasgow, Scotland), also suggest a potential new mechanism for the increased risk of diabetes. Among statin-treated patients in their analysis, the alleles associated with lower LDL cholesterol and increased diabetes risk were also associated with a small but statistically significant increase in weight.
Each additional allele of one single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), for example, was associated with an increased body weight of 0.30 kg. In the randomized trial data, statin-treated patients gained 0.24 kg, which is consistent with the genetic analysis, say researchers.
“This study has pooled all available trial data to give us the most accurate idea of the extent to which statin therapy affects diabetes risk, The weight increase we found was small and not clinically relevant, but it is possible that it relates to the increased diabetes risk. Notably, the corresponding genetic results provide evidence that these findings from the major statin trials represent a mechanism-based effect.”
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