New research published in the journal PLoS indicates that the use of the cholesterol-lowing class of drugs known as statins is associated with an increased prevalence of microalbuminuria, a well-known marker of vascular dysfunction, affecting both cardiovascular and kidney disease risk.
Microalbuminuria is known to double the risk for a cardiovascular event in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and is a marker for endothelial function; endothelial dysfunction may, in fact, be far more significant than elevated blood lipids in determining cardiovascular disease risk. This new finding therefore calls into question the justification for using statin drugs for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease, which is presently the standard of care in the drug-base conventional medical model.
According to the study:
Microalbuminuria (MAU) is considered as a predictor or marker of cardiovascular and renal events. Statins are widely prescribed to reduce cardiovascular risk and to slow down progression of kidney disease. But statins may also generate tubular MAU. The current observational study evaluated the impact of statin use on the interpretation of MAU as a predictor or marker of cardiovascular or renal disease...Use of statins is independently associated with MAU, even after adjusting for bias by indication to receive a statin.
This study confirms a growing body of research indicating that statin drugs are cardiotoxic. Examples of this cardiotoxicy are as follows:
- Atorvastatin has been found to worsen ventricular diastolic function
- Lovastatin has been found to make LDL cholesterol more susceptible to oxidation
- Simvastatin-induced heart failure has been reported
- Simvastatin-induced atrial fibrillation has been reported
- Statin induced myocardial ischemia has been reported in animal studies
A review published in the journal Biofactors in 2004 found that the use of statin drugs may be resulting in coenzyme q10 depletion, and raised the possibility that this could be behind the congestive heart failure epidemic presently afflicting those in the United States.
Another more recent study published in the journal of Clinical Cardiology demonstrated that statin drugs weaken the heart muscle in humans. For additional information on this topic read the article on the topic below.
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