Now that the link has been proven
linking statins to causing diabetes, why is our government agencies
doing nothing to bring a halt to statin use. Or at least slowing the
rate of prescriptions until the new statins can be produced that
don't cause diabetes. My only conclusion is that the medical
profession would object because they believe that statins are the
end-all for heart health and diabetes be damned.
A research team from McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada may have
found a novel way to suppress the side effect of causing diabetes.
The researchers discovered one of the pathways that link statins to
diabetes. Their findings could lead to the next generation of
statins by informing potential combination therapies while taking the
drug.
"But the
side effects of statins can be far worse than not being able to eat
grapefruit. Recently, an increased risk of diabetes has been added
to the warning label for statin use. This was perplexing to us
because if you are improving your metabolic profile with statins you
should actually be decreasing the incidence of diabetes with these
drugs, yet, the opposite happened."
The
researchers found that statins activated a very specific immune
response, which stopped insulin from doing its job properly. So we
connected the dots and found that combining statins with another drug
on top of it, Glyburide (one of the generic sulfonylureas),
suppressed this side effect. The lead researcher says the finding
has the potential to develop new targets for this immune pathway that
does not interfere with the benefits of statins.
What is very plain from the lead
researcher is not to worry about statins and he is promoting more
research to find more out about statins and develop new strategies to
minimize side effects. The lead research says the next stage of
their research is to understand how statins promote diabetes by
understanding how they work in the pancreas, which secretes insulin.
They also hope to understand if this immune pathway is involved in
other side effects of statins, such as muscle pain and
life-threatening muscle breakdown.
The lead
researcher also believes, “With the new
federal warning label on the risk of diabetes with statin usage,
people are heavily debating its pros and cons. We think this is the
wrong conversation to have. Statins are a great drug for many
people. What we really should be talking about is how to make them
better and we are beginning to understand the basic biology of
statins so we can do just that.”
The
research is published in the medical journal Diabetes and was
supported by funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research
and the Canadian Diabetes Association.
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