Over the past couple years, a number of patients in our clinic have reported that they experienced increased muscle fatigue and balance problems when they began taking various statins to reduce cholesterol. These same patients reported an improvement in muscle function and balance when they discontinued use of the statins.This seemed random at the time, but  a recent study of 150,000 patients over 6 years draws some strong correlations between statin potency and muscle damage. The article has not been printed yet, but it was previewed in a recent O&P journal.

Watch for or search:

Hoffman KB, Kraus C, Dimbil M, et al. A survey of the FDA’s AERS database regarding muscle and tendon adverse events linked to the statin drug class. PLoS One. Aug. 22, 2012.

This is a significant finding.