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.
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.
The American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association developed some prescription guidelines. Typically, if a person's LDL cholesterol (bad cholesterol) is 190 or higher, they're often advised to start a statin.
Compared to younger adults, older adults are more likely to suffer serious side effects from using statins. Statins can cause muscle problems, such as aches, pains, or weakness. Rarely, there can be a severe form of muscle breakdown.
Do not start a statin in patients ages ≥ 75 years who do not have known vascular disease or type 2 diabetes; start or continue a statin in all patients ages 75 to 84 with type 2 diabetes to prevent cardiovascular events and mortality; and start or continue a statin in patients ages > 75 years who have known vascular ...
Statins are used to prevent heart attacks, strokes, and other life-threatening events associated with heart disease. Because strong evidence from clinical studies show the benefits of statins for adults up to age 75, doctors often prescribe them.
Which cholesterol-lowering drug is the safest? 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.
According to a research review people who take simvastatin (Zocor) or pravastatin (Pravachol) may experience fewer side effects.
Statins are the most common medicine for high cholesterol. They reduce the amount of cholesterol your body makes. You take a tablet once a day. You usually need to take them for life.
If you're taking a statin medication to lower your cholesterol, you will need to keep taking your prescription, or your cholesterol will likely go back up. Stopping your statin can put you at risk of having heart disease and other preventable health problems like stroke and heart attack from high cholesterol.
If you have high cholesterol and are at high risk for cardiovascular disease, you should consider statins. That's because the benefits of statins greatly outweigh the risks. Statins reduce the risk of serious cardiovascular events like heart attack or stroke by up to 25%, and death by 10%.
Statins help lower low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, also known as “bad” cholesterol, in the blood. They draw cholesterol out of plaque and stabilize plaque, Blaha says.
While statins are highly effective and safe for most people, they have been linked to muscle pain, digestive problems and mental fuzziness in some people who take them and may rarely cause liver damage.
Some people do not tolerate statins or may want to try natural remedies to treat their high cholesterol. Statin alternatives include some prescription medications like ezetimibe and fibric acids. Natural remedies that some people use to help treat high cholesterol include omega-3 fatty acids and red yeast rice extract.
PCSK-9 inhibitors thus reduce cholesterol levels by maintaining higher levels of LDL receptors that remove cholesterol from the blood. Currently, PCSK-9 inhibitors are limited in use as they must be administered as shots. Further research into them could expand their use as an alternative to statins.
Statins should be taken with caution if you're at an increased risk of developing a rare side effect called myopathy, which is where the tissues of your muscles become damaged and painful. Severe myopathy (rhabdomyolysis) can lead to kidney damage. Things that can increase this risk include: being over 70 years old.
Adverse Effects and Hepatotoxicity
Simvastatin, lovastatin, fluvastatin, and atorvastatin are metabolized by cytochrome P-450, while pravastatin, rosuvastatin, and pitavastatin remain almost unaffected by any hepatic metabolic processes.
Low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol.
The most important thing your doctor will keep in mind when thinking about statin treatment is your long-term risk of a heart attack or stroke. If your risk is very low, you probably won't need a statin, unless your LDL is above 190 mg/dL (4.92 mmol/L).
Some symptoms may go away as you continue to take the medication. If you're taking the statin preventively, your doctor may try to determine if your muscle pain symptoms are actually due to the statin by suggesting a brief holiday from the drug to see if they disappear when you're not taking it.
After having their cholesterol tested, seniors should be given a number between 190 and 260. Healthy seniors should keep their total cholesterol below 200 and their LDL cholesterol around 100. If your elderly loved one's LDL cholesterol level is above 160, he or she must start making sweeping lifestyle changes.
Pravastatin and rosuvastatin are the preferred statins in these patients because they are not metabolized only by the liver [31].
Total cholesterol levels steadily increase with age from 20 to 65, following which they decrease slightly in men and tend to plateau in women. Elevated cholesterol levels are not uncommon in the elderly (61% of women aged between 65 and 74 have total cholesterol levels over 6.2 mmol/L [240 mg/dL]).
Compared to a placebo, simvastatin reduced all-cause mortality by 13% and cardiovascular mortality by 27% regardless of age. Simvastatin decreased the rate of a first major cardiovascular event by 18% in participants aged 70–80 years (60).