Many patients discontinue statin treatment, often after having a possible adverse reaction. The risks and benefits of continued statin therapy after an adverse reaction are not known. Patients who continued to receive statin prescriptions after an adverse reaction had a 10% to 20% lower incidence of both cardiovascular events and death from any cause, a study found.

Adverse reactions included myalgias, myopathies, or other musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders; drug intolerance among other events. The primary composite outcome was time to a myocardial infarction or stroke, or to death. Results were published on July 25th 2017 by Annals of Internal Medicine.

A total of 28,266 patients were included in the study. Of these, 19,989 (70.7%) continued receiving statin prescriptions after the adverse reaction and 8,277 did not. Four years after the presumed adverse event, the cumulative incidence of the composite primary outcome was 12.2% for patients with continued statin prescriptions, compared with 13.9% for those without them (difference, 1.7%; 95% CI, 0.8% to 2.7%;P<0.001). In a secondary analysis of 7,604 patients for whom a different statin was prescribed after the adverse reaction, 2,014 (26.5%) had a documented adverse reaction to the second statin, but 1,696 (84.2%) of those patients continued receiving statin prescriptions.

The authors wrote that the findings may help physicians engage in a balanced discussion about the benefits and risks of continuing statin therapy after an adverse reaction.

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