In patients at high-risk of major adverse cardiac events, Atorvastatin administered at high doses was the most effective at reducing non-HDL-C by around 2.0 mmol/l. The findings firmly support and extend new NICE guidelines for adults with diabetes, which were updated in April 2021.
Rosuvastatin and atorvastatin are the best at lowering LDL cholesterol.
Among the individual medications, studies have shown that simvastatin (Zocor®) and pravastatin (Pravachol®) seem to be safer and better tolerated than the other statins.
According to a research review people who take simvastatin (Zocor) or pravastatin (Pravachol) may experience fewer side effects.
Statins are the most common medicine for high cholesterol. They reduce the amount of cholesterol your body makes. You take a tablet once a day. You usually need to take them for life.
In studies, Nexletol also appears to reduce the risk of muscle pain, a common complaint of people on statins. Nexletol (bempedoic acid) is a new cholesterol-lowering drug.
In a retrospective cohort study, lovastatin showed no increased risk of adverse hepatic effects in a total of 93,106 patients with liver disease.
They looked at the effects of Lipitor, Crestor, Zocor, and Pravachol on lowering LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol after six weeks. The study concluded that Crestor lowered LDL cholesterol by 8.2% more than Lipitor, and Crestor lowered total cholesterol significantly more than all the other statins studied.
Ezetimibe. Ezetimibe (Zetia) is a medication that's often prescribed in cases where a statin alone isn't enough. If you've hit the maximum recommended dose of your statin but your cholesterol levels are still high, your healthcare provider might recommend it.
Most popular prescriptions. Atorvastatin (Lipitor) is a statin used to treat high cholesterol.
Atorvastatin is the most common cause of clinically significant liver injury among statins with a reported incidence of 1/17 000 users.
Is muscle pain a side effect of all statins? Even though all statins are similar chemically, they have some minor differences that could impact how likely they are to cause muscle pain. Simvastatin is the most likely to cause muscle pain, and fluvastatin is the least likely.
Despite this, there was no significant difference between the two drugs in how well they decreased the volume of atherosclerotic buildup in the arteries. Both Crestor and Lipitor are generally well tolerated with a similar rate of side effects.
Federal regulators have approved the new drug Leqvio to be used to help lower cholesterol levels in some people. The medication is designed to be taken along with statins and a balanced diet. Leqvio is designed to be taken twice a year, which experts say should help people adhere to a medication schedule.
While statins are highly effective and safe for most people, they have been linked to muscle pain, digestive problems and mental fuzziness in some people who take them and may rarely cause liver damage.
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.
If you have high cholesterol and are at high risk for cardiovascular disease, you should consider statins. That's because the benefits of statins greatly outweigh the risks. Statins reduce the risk of serious cardiovascular events like heart attack or stroke by up to 25%, and death by 10%.
Statin-associated hepatocellular injury frequently occurs 5 to 90 days after the initiation of therapy. Bilirubin levels more than twice the ULN imply severe hepatocellular liver injury with a mortality of 10% and an incidence of 0.7–1.3 per 100,000 cases of drug-induced liver injury (DILI).
Before you start taking statins, your doctor should carry out a blood test to ensure your liver is in a relatively good condition. You should also have a routine blood test to check the health of your liver 3 months after treatment begins, and undergo another after 12 months.
Natural statins are dietary supplements that are considered helpful in lowering your cholesterol. There's some evidence that the following are effective when it comes to reducing cholesterol levels.
Fibrates. Doctors often prescribe a fibrate for patients who can't take a statin. Like the statins, fibrates reduce the body's cholesterol production, but they are less effective in lowering LDL cholesterol levels.
There are many non-statin medications your doctor might prescribe: Bile acid-binding resins, like cholestyramine (Locholest, Prevalite, Questran), colesevelam (WelChol), and colestipol (Colestid) stick to cholesterol-rich bile acids in your intestines and lower your LDL levels.