Statin therapy increases the risk of new-onset diabetes in elderly women by 33%, and the higher the dose, the greater the risk, a new analysis of the observational Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health shows.

“Clearly, statins have beneficial effects, including a reduction in the risk of cardiovascular events; however, the dose-response effect we observed suggests that it may be wise to avoid using higher doses of statins in older women,” lead author Mark Jones, MD, senior lecturer, school of public health, the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, told Medscape Medical News in an email.

“GPs and their elderly female patients should be aware of the risks,” Dr Jones added in a University of Queensland statement, noting that those elderly women taking statins “should be carefully and regularly monitored for increased blood glucose to ensure early detection and management of diabetes.”

And, he and his colleagues suggest, it may be the case that statins could be stopped altogether in some elderly women.

“The women in our study would have been aged 86 to 92 at the end of follow-up and, depending upon reason for initial prescribing—primary or secondary prevention—serious consideration could perhaps now be recommended for statin deprescribing in women of this age,” they conclude.

Drugs Aging. 2017;34:203–209. Abstract