{"id":35566,"date":"2013-03-20T12:36:36","date_gmt":"2013-03-20T16:36:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?post_type=news&p=35566"},"modified":"2013-03-20T12:42:03","modified_gmt":"2013-03-20T16:42:03","slug":"high-potency-statins-linked-to-increased-risk-for-acute-kidney-injury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2013\/03\/20\/high-potency-statins-linked-to-increased-risk-for-acute-kidney-injury\/","title":{"rendered":"High Potency Statins Linked to Increased Risk for Acute Kidney Injury"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although the beneficial effects of high-potency statins have been well-characterized in clinical trials, these same trials have lacked the power to illuminate rare but potentially important adverse events. A suggestion of one such area of concern, acute kidney injury, was first raised in the SATURN trial. Now,\u00a0a new study published in\u00a0<\/a>BMJ<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>provides further information about this area.<\/p>\n

Researchers in the Canadian Network for Observational Drug Effect Studies (CNODES) performed a retrospective observational analysis of administrative databases in\u00a0Canada, the U.K., and the U.S. containing more than 2 million patients newly treated with statins.\u00a0 Of these, 59,636 of the subjects already had chronic kidney disease. One-third of the subjects received high potency statins, defined as \u226510 mg rosuvastatin, \u226520 mg atorvastatin, and \u226540 mg simvastatin.<\/p>\n

Within 120 days of starting treatment\u00a0there were 4691 hospitalizations for acute kidney injury in patients without pre-existing kidney disease and 1896 hospitalizations in patients with pre-existing disease. Patients without pre-existing disease on high potency statins were 34% more likely to be hospitalized with acute kidney injury than patients on other statin regimens. Patients with pre-existing disease did not have a significant increase in risk if they were taking high potency statins.<\/p>\n

The authors estimated that 1,700 patients without pre-existing kidney disease would need to be treated with a high potency statin instead of a low potency statin to cause one additional acute kidney injury requiring hospitalization.\u00a0The findings, according to the authors, are broadly consistent with the JUPITER trial. They write:<\/p>\n

Given what is likely to be a small magnitude of incremental cardiovascular benefit of high potency statins over low potency statins in reality, a pressing question is how to identify patients for whom the risk-benefit balance for high potency statin treatment is unfavourable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In\u00a0an accompanying editorial<\/a>, Robert Fassett and Jeff Coombes write that “clinicians should use low potency statins whenever possible to provide cardiovascular benefits without the increased risk of acute kidney injury.” Further, they note, “despite extensive experience with the use of statins over many years, optimization of doses to derive benefit but minimize risk is still evolving.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although the beneficial effects of high-potency statins have been well-characterized in clinical trials, these same trials have lacked the power to illuminate rare but potentially important adverse events. A suggestion of one such area of concern, acute kidney injury, was first raised in the SATURN trial. Now,\u00a0a new study published in\u00a0BMJ\u00a0provides further information about this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,7],"tags":[1737,1621,584],"class_list":["post-35566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-prevention","tag-high-potency-statins","tag-kidney-injury","tag-statins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}