High potency cholesterol drugs linked to kidney injury

TORONTO -- The use of high potency versions of cholesterol lowering drugs called statins may increase a person's risk of developing kidney failure, a new study suggests.

The research found that when compared to low dose statin regimens, high potency versions of the pills were linked to slightly elevated rates of acute kidney injury.

The researchers, who are from institutions across Canada, estimate that for every 1,700 people who used high dose statins for 120 days, you would expect to see one more person hospitalized with kidney failure.

While that number may seem small, a drug safety expert who wasn't involved in the work noted that use of these drugs is common.

"Tens of millions of North Americans take these drugs, and so even side-effects that are relatively uncommon are important," said Dr. David Juurlink, a specialist in internal medicine and clinical pharmacology at Toronto's Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.

"The findings strongly suggest that high-dose statins can cause acute kidney injury.... Most clinicians don't generally perceive statins to be a potential cause of kidney injury. Hopefully this study will change that perception, and make us all a bit more careful of how we use these drugs."

The research was produced by the Canadian Network for Observational Drug Effect Studies, which is funded by Health Canada. The study was published in the journal BMJ.

Lead author Colin Dormuth said previous studies have shown hints that high potency statins may increase the risk of kidney failure, but the studies were not large enough to provide more than a signal of a potential problem. If the increased risk only shows up at a rate of one additional case per 1,700 people treated, a study would need to be very large to ensure that effect was real and not merely a chance observation.

So Dormuth and his colleagues pooled data on more than two million people who took statins, comparing those who took high potency formulations to those taking lower doses of the drugs. People included were aged 40 and older and started taking statins between the beginning of 1997 and April 30, 2008.

The data were drawn from databases from seven Canadian provinces as well as from Britain and the United States. About a third of the 2,067,639 people in the study were using high potency statins.

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High potency cholesterol drugs linked to kidney injury