Statin long-term safety and side effects
Are there studies showing side effects or downsides of long term statin therapies? Would the large scale longitudinal studies capture these if there were any?
I recently did a fairly extensive review of published articles and found the following: 1. Overall, there is a fairly extensive body of evidence supporting long term safety of statins, looking at multiple end points 2. When you combine evidence, three potential adverse effects come up: a) Myopathy and related muscle toxicity: <0.1% and generally reversible b) New onset diabetes around 0.2% per year and 3) hemorrhagic stroke marginal increase 4) liver related toxicity less than 0.001% Adverse effects NOT supported by evidence include following: cognitive impairment, renal dysfunction, cataracts, cancer, tendon rupture, or interstitial lung disease. The European Heart Journal consensus panel in 2018 specifically evaluated glucose homeostasis, cognitive function, renal function, hepatic function, hemorrhagic stroke, and cataracts, concluding that long-term statin treatment is "remarkably safe".