Rhabdomyolysis or milder forms of muscle inflammation from statins can be diagnosed with a blood test measuring levels of the enzyme creatinine kinase. If you notice moderate or severe muscle aches after starting to take a statin, contact your doctor.
One of the most common complaints of people taking statins is muscle pain. You may feel this pain as a soreness, tiredness or weakness in your muscles. The pain can be a mild discomfort, or it can be severe enough to make your daily activities difficult.
Statin-related muscle pain, if it happens at all, usually happens within the first few months after you start the drug or raise the dose. You may feel a constant soreness or weakness in your shoulders, thighs, hips, or calves. If you're like most people, it'll affect both sides of your body equally.
Simvastatin is the most likely to cause muscle pain, and fluvastatin is the least likely.
Within a month of starting statin therapy, they may feel aches or weakness in the large muscles of their arms, shoulders, thighs or buttocks on both sides of the body. About 5 to 10% of people who try statins are affected. It's more common in the elderly, in women and in those taking the more potent statins.
Importantly, when considering a statin, other factors such as potency (i.e., effect on low-density lipoprotein [LDL] cholesterol levels) should be considered. While pravastatin and fluvastatin may be associated with the lowest incidence of myalgia, the LDL-lowering effect is low compared to other statins.
Specifically, statins may lead to muscle damage in 1 in 10,000 people who take this type of drug each year. The damage is typically reversible once the person stops taking the statin.
According to a research review people who take simvastatin (Zocor) or pravastatin (Pravachol) may experience fewer side effects.
For every 1000 people taking a moderate intensity statin, the treatment would cause 11 (generally mild) episodes of muscle pain or weakness.
The majority of muscle damage by statins is secondary to its direct toxic effects, possibly via coenzyme Q10 depletion causing mitochondrial dysfunction. The injury is dose dependent and reversible after withdrawing the drug, with most recovery of symptoms occurring within 2–3 months (3).
Specifically, 57% of the patients (n = 25) reported resolution of muscle symptoms by 1 month, another 34% (n = 15) by 6 months, and 7% (n = 3) by 14 months after stopping statin use. The single patient with ongoing muscle pain chose to continue statin therapy because of the high risk of cardiovascular disease.
Your doctor will carry out a blood test to measure a substance in your blood called creatine kinase (CK), which is released into the blood when your muscles are inflamed or damaged. If the level of CK in your blood is more than 5 times the normal level, your doctor may advise you to stop taking the statin.
It can be a mild tiredness or discomfort, or it can be severe enough to make your daily activities difficult. These side effects usually occur within 4 to 6 weeks of starting a statin, but they can occur even after several years.
An inability to tolerate a dose of statin required to reduce a person's cardiovascular risk sufficiently from their baseline risk and could result from different statin related side effects, including; muscle symptoms, headache, sleep disorders, dyspepsia, nausea, rash, alopecia, erectile dysfunction, gynecomastia, and ...
What is muscle pain? Muscle pain, or myalgia, is a sign of an injury, infection, disease or other health problem. You may feel a deep, steady ache or random sharp pains. Some people have muscle pain all over, while others have it in specific areas.
If you're taking a statin medication to lower your cholesterol, you will need to keep taking your prescription, or your cholesterol will likely go back up. Stopping your statin can put you at risk of having heart disease and other preventable health problems like stroke and heart attack from high cholesterol.
For the purposes of this definition, the lowest daily starting doses of statins are proposed as rosuvastatin 5 mg, atorvastatin 10 mg, simvastatin 20 mg, lovastatin 20 mg, pravastatin 40 mg, fluvastatin 40 mg, and pitavastatin 2 mg.
Symptoms tend to disappear within 3 months after you stop taking statins, with no permanent damage in most cases. But a 2018 study suggests that in rare cases, some muscle damage isn't reversible. Moderate exercise, as opposed to intense physical activity, also may help eliminate myopathy symptoms.
PCSK-9 inhibitors thus reduce cholesterol levels by maintaining higher levels of LDL receptors that remove cholesterol from the blood. Currently, PCSK-9 inhibitors are limited in use as they must be administered as shots. Further research into them could expand their use as an alternative to statins.
Statins can rarely cause muscle inflammation (swelling) and damage. Speak to your doctor if you have muscle pain, tenderness or weakness that cannot be explained – for example, pain that is not caused by physical work.
In the vast majority of cases these symptoms will disappear, but you should not stop taking ayourstatin without speaking to your doctor first and trying a different type. They may suggest stopping the statin for a short time to see if the symptoms go away.
As evident from periodic liver enzyme estimations, we can say that alternate-day statin therapy is at least as safe as daily treatment regime. While there was one instance of myalgia, on daily atorvastatin treatment, alternate-day dosage of the same was well tolerated.
Muscle pain is the most common side effect of the cholesterol-lowering statins. Although it is usually a constant pain or ache, it may appear as nighttime cramps.