August 12th, 2012

Statins and Risk of Treated Incident Diabetes in a Primary Care Population

British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, 08/01/2012 Clinical Article
Zaharan NL et al. –

An increased risk of new onset treated diabetes was found in those treated with statins showing significant duration and dose effect. Further study is required to confirm this association.

Methods
A retrospective cohort study was performed using the Irish Health Services Executive Primary Care Reimbursement Services national pharmacy claims database. Individuals who received any medicines were identified from January 2001 to January 2009 (n=1,235,671).
Patients newly treated with statins from 1stJanuary 2002 to 31stDecember 2007 were identified (n=239,628).
Cases were identified as individuals newly treated with antidiabetic medication (n=38,503).
Adjusted hazards ratios (HR) with 95% confidence intervals were calculated to examine the association between statins (any versus none) and time to new onset treated diabetes using Cox proportional hazard regression.
The dose and duration response relationship between statins and new onset treated diabetes was examined using restricted spline functions to assess the linearity of the relationship.

Results
Increased risk of new onset treated diabetes was found with rosuvastatin (HR=1.41[1.31,1.52]), atorvastatin (HR=1.23[1.19,1.27] and simvastatin (HR=1.15[1.05,1.25]).
There were statistically significant overall dose and duration effects for all statins, excepting fluvastatin which only demonstrated a duration effect.