Side Effects Prompt Patients To Stop Cholesterol Drugs

Lipitor and other statin drugs are among the most commonly prescribed drugs in the United States.

Lipitor and other statin drugs are among the most commonly prescribed drugs in the United States.

With one-quarter of adults over age 45 taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, it figures that more than a few people would have trouble sticking with the program.

More than a few, actually.

A big new study of statin use in the real world found that 17 percent of patients taking the pills reported side effects, including muscle pain, nausea, and problems with their liver or nervous system.

That's a lot higher than the 5 to 10 percent reported in the randomized controlled trials that provided evidence for regulatory approval of the medicines.

This study, which was published in Annals of Internal Medicine, looked at more than 100,000 people who'd been prescribed statins from 2000 through 2008 at two academic medical centers.

About two-thirds of people with side effects quit taking statins. All in all, half of all the people who been prescribed the drugs quit them at last temporarily. Twenty percent quit for more than a year.

It's tough to get people to take medicine to reduce the odds of disease years from now, notes Dr. Scott Grundy, a cholesterol researcher at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. "The vast majority of people don't have side effects," he wrote in an editorial accompanying the study. "Not continuing the drug has a lot more to do with people just not wanting to take drugs for a lifetime."

People have decidedly mixed feelings about the side effects associated with statins, according to a 2012 NPR-Truven Health Analytics poll.

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Side Effects Prompt Patients To Stop Cholesterol Drugs