Do statins have useful roles in rheumatology especially in rheumatoid arthritis?
Dear Mohammed Alosami
yes statins have very crucial role in osteoarthritis. As statins are cholesterol-lowering property, but theay also have to posses the antiinflammatory property, the clinical study study data of more than 16000 patient proved that it has useful to treat osteoarthritis diseaseThey are also thought to protect against cancer and Alzheimer’s and ease the symptoms of multiple sclerosis and protect diabetes sufferers against heart disease.
Dear Dr. Patil,
In your posting one can get the impression that statins are a sort of panacea ?!
I do not believe so. The evidence-based property is their cholesterol-lowering one. The others should need serious studies which sofar are not available.
As far as the given question is concerned, in my opinion cholesterol-controlling has nothing to do with an antiinflammatory action or interaction for RA.
Not all studies looking at statins and OA have been positive. In the study below that used strict radiographic definitions, there was no link between the presence of radiographic OA and statin usage. One would assume that if statin usage modulated the pathophysiology of OA, long term users would be less likely to have OA, but this was not the case.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3995213/
In terms of RA (which was your secondary question), there does seem to be some interesting data that show a possible anti-inflammatory effect of statins on the joints and acute phase reactants. There are individual studies available but below is a 2014 meta-analysis. So, there is an extra reason to treat the hyperlipidaemia in our RA patients!
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25327393
thanks alot drSwan Sim Yeap ,drJohn James Edwards, drPanayot Tanchev ,and drMithun Vishwanath K. Patil your answers are very interesting and useful.
My understanding is there is no RCTs to answer this question. All we have are observational studies.
Yes. some studies showed a possible anti-inflammatory effect of statins on the joints and acute phase reactants.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24347568
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21989540
thanks dr faiq Isho,also thanks dr Patompong Ungprasert
Currently finishing my research on statins and gouty arthritis, - looks like they do create significant biochemical difference in inflammatory indicators (IL-1, C-RP etc) but no clinical difference in a short term treatment can be found.
So on my opinion only long history of statin use may create some statisticaly significant changes in such a slowgoing inflammatory disease as OA.
I think this discussion goes wrong from the very beginning. Are we talking about inflammatory or degenerative joint disease? In my country we diiffer between osteoarthritis /rheumatic, gouty, purulent, etc./ and osteoarthrosis /degenerative/.There is a big difference in etiology, pathogenesis, clinical signs and treatment. In fact this terminological ambguity is the cause for misunderstandings and per se is an issue of an ever-lasting discussion. It is very strange that we do not achieve a common language as far as the term osteoarthritis is concerned.
role of statins in rheumatology have to be crystallized in the sense that it's benefits are mostly due to its pleiotropic effects. RA itself is a risk factor for CAD, and it does help to manage the other tisk factors like dyslipidaemia.
Kindly see the following RG links and PDF attachment.
Article Outcome of Rheumatoid Arthritis Following Adjunct Statin Therapy
Article The Role of Statins in Disease Modification and Cardiovascul...
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Geoscience
- Asia
- India