Support for People Taking Statins

By Doug Donaldson

Reaffirming that patients may know more about a drug’s effects than the manufacturer, the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine has developed a Web site that allows patients to post comments about their experiences with statin drugs.

These types of drugs, among the most-prescribed medications in the United States, reduce cholesterol levels and help decrease the risks of heart disease.

“This line of research is important because many physicians and other experts in heart disease and cholesterol are familiar with the benefits of statins and other cholesterol drugs, but are unfamiliar with the adverse experiences with these drugs that many people have reported, such as effects on muscle pain or weakness, memory and thinking, or mood,” says Beatrice A. Golomb, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of medicine and head of the UCSD statin study.

Patients on these medications have complained of symptoms drug manufacturers may not report. For example, nearly 60 percent of patients taking statins reported muscle weakness or fatigue, according to Golomb, who has been researching the drug for the past seven years.

The site, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, can be found at www.statineffects.com.

“We received many calls from patients in the community experiencing side effects and wanting answers about what to expect,” Golomb says. “We developed this Web site as a tool to gather information on side effects, and to help answer these questions.”