You should not use atorvastatin if you are allergic to it, or if you have liver failure or cirrhosis. Atorvastatin may harm an unborn baby. Tell your doctor if you are pregnant. Ask a doctor if it is safe to breastfeed while using this medicine.
Statins should not be taken if you have liver disease or if blood tests suggest that your liver may not be working properly. This is because statins can affect your liver, and this is more likely to cause serious problems if you already have a damaged liver.
Serious side effects
you get a skin rash with pink or red blotches, especially on the palms of your hands or soles of your feet – this could be a sign of erythema multiforme. you have severe stomach pain – this can be a sign of acute pancreatitis.
Call your doctor right away if you get a headache, stomach pain, vomiting, dark-colored urine, loss of appetite, weight loss, general feeling of tiredness or weakness, light-colored stools, upper right stomach pain, or yellow eyes or skin. These could be symptoms of liver damage.
There are many risks associated with taking atorvastatin, so the drug is not as commonly prescribed as it once was. Memory loss, liver damage, type 2 diabetes, and kidney disease are all serious side effects associated with atorvastatin.
Your doctor may suggest that you lower your dose or change your medicine. You will not get any withdrawal symptoms. However, stopping atorvastatin may cause your cholesterol to rise. This increases your risk of heart attacks and strokes.
Overall, statins are safe as a class of drugs. Serious adverse events are very rare. Among the individual medications, studies have shown that simvastatin (Zocor®) and pravastatin (Pravachol®) seem to be safer and better tolerated than the other statins.
If you've made lifestyle changes through diet and exercise that have lowered your cholesterol levels, you may not need to continue taking a statin. These changes can help reduce your risk of heart attack, stroke, or blocked arteries while allowing you to take one less medication.
Fear of side effects and perceived side effects are the most common reasons for declining or discontinuing statin therapy. Willingness to take a statin is high, among both patients who have declined statin therapy and those who have never been offered one.
Atorvastatin competitively inhibits 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-coenzyme A (HMG-CoA) reductase. By preventing the conversion of HMG-CoA to mevalonate, statin medications decrease cholesterol production in the liver.
This is because the enzyme which makes the cholesterol is more active at night. Also, the half-life, or the amount of time it takes for half the dose to leave your body, of some statins is short.
Grapefruit juice is the only food or drink that has a direct interaction with statins. Statins do not directly interact with any food but people taking statins should moderate their intake of saturated fats to help lower their LDL cholesterol and overall risk of cardiovascular disease.
Statins are medications designed to lower cholesterol to decrease your risk of cardiovascular issues, such as heart attacks. Recent research shows that people 75 and older who go off statins have an increased risk of hospitalization because of cardiovascular problems.
It's possible, although unlikely, that one particular statin may cause side effects for you while another statin won't. It's thought that simvastatin (Zocor) may be more likely to cause muscle pain as a side effect than other statins when it's taken at high doses.
Both Lipitor and Crestor are excellent medications to help improve high cholesterol and to decrease your risk of heart attacks and strokes. In studies, Crestor was more effective at lowering total cholesterol levels and raising HDL levels (Jones, 2003).
The bottom line. Simvastatin and atorvastatin are statin medications that work similarly to help lower cholesterol. Atorvastatin is preferred over simvastatin if you need a high-intensity statin. But if you need a moderate- or low-intensity statin, both are effective treatment options.
What happens if you forget to take your cholesterol medication? If you simply forget to take a dose of your statin medication, you're not likely to have any serious effects. It could take some time for your cholesterol to build up to pre-statin levels — likely longer than a few days.
Clinical studies revealed Lipitor can damage liver function, and the FDA has received rare post-marketing reports of both fatal and nonfatal liver failure. Other reported liver problems include jaundice, hepatitis, chronic liver damage and fatty changes to the liver.
We have data now from over 20 statin trials of over 135,000 patients that show statins compared with placebo or no medication result in a 23 percent reduction in heart attacks, 17 percent reduction in fatal or non-fatal stroke and 19 percent reduction in death from cardiovascular causes. So, they definitely work.
Statins are the most common medicine for high cholesterol. They reduce the amount of cholesterol your body makes.
Atorvastatin or fluvastatin are usually recommended because there is no need to adjust the dose according to the glomerular filtration rate [28]. In patients without diagnosed atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, it is indicated a moderate dose of statin, such as atorvastatin 20 mg daily [28].
Within a month of starting statin therapy, they may feel aches or weakness in the large muscles of their arms, shoulders, thighs or buttocks on both sides of the body. About 5 to 10% of people who try statins are affected. It's more common in the elderly, in women and in those taking the more potent statins.