New side effects found in statins
They have been hailed as wonder drugs — lowering cholesterol and helping heart patients recover their health — but side effects of some statin therapies may be loss of muscle mass and premature fatigue, especially in older people, the largest patient group taking them.
In older people there is a clear relationship between the maintenance of muscle mass and quality of life and longevity. Healthy muscles improve mobility and physical fitness, protecting against the falls, which can often lead to the onset of more serious illness and disabilities.
Now researchers at The University of Nottingham, are asking older members of the public to help them with a new two-year research project to discover the underlying causes of an effect that they have already found impairs muscle maintenance in animals.
“There’s no doubt statins have a very positive outcome in reducing incidences of cardiac events and stroke attributable to high blood cholesterol levels,” said Primary Investigator Paul Greenhaff, Professor of Muscle Metabolism at The University of Nottingham.
“However, we have found one, simvastatin — the main one given to many elderly patients, can cause impairment of pathways regulating muscle mass and metabolism,” he said.
Professor Greenhaff and his colleagues Dr Tim Constantin and Professor Michael Rennie have been awarded just over £238,000 by the Dunhill Medical Trust, a charitable institution interested in the UK’s aging population, to conduct research into these side effects.
“We are especially grateful to the Dunhill Medical Trust for supporting this project,” said Professor Greenhaff. “Due to the well documented benefits of statins for cardiovascular health and mortality, it would have been difficult to secure funding without the Trust.”
This grant allows the team to take on a clinician, a postdoctoral researcher and other staff to conduct detailed experiments to learn how and why certain statins appear to blunt muscle protein synthesis and the slowing effect that insulin has on muscle breakdown.
It will also enable them to recruit healthy elderly people for their study as well as those who have experienced muscle soreness and other symptoms associated with the side effects of simvastatin. “We’re very keen to recruit healthy older volunteers for this vital study to determine the incidences of muscle impairment and the mechanisms that cause it,” said Professor Greenhaff.
“In the medical literature, we see that in the general population the incidence of adverse effects associated with taking statins is low,” he added. “However, in the elderly, the group to whom simvastatin is most often prescribed, the incidence of muscle impairment increases by as much as 10 per cent.”
The team aims to understand the underlying causes of muscle mass loss, metabolic impairment and premature fatigue in patients affected by these side effects. Normally a GP will simply prescribe another type of statin to see if that works better, but it is important to understand the physiological reasons why this occurs.
“It appears from the research we recently carried out in partnership with AstraZeneca pharmaceuticals that some statins cause insulin resistance in muscles and activation of pathways that cause muscle protein loss.”
Nottingham has an international reputation for human metabolic physiology — the effect of diet on health and disease. Professor Greenhaff and colleagues have already determined that when older people eat, they cannot make muscle as fast as the young. Nottingham research colleagues recently revealed why the suppression of muscle breakdown, which also happens during feeding, is blunted with age.
Professor Greenhaff and Research Fellow Joanne Mallinson in the School of Biomedical Sciences are currently recruiting healthy men 65 years and over who are taking the drug simvastatin or zocor and are experiencing muscle aches and pains. They are also recruiting healthy men 65 years and over who do not take statins.
Hello everyone!
I mean when you are exercising at that very moment and after. Does your metabolism really get fast? What if you dont exercise at all one or two days, will your metabolism still be fast?Metabolism Tips