The Impact of Statin Intolerance in Lipid Clinic Patients

Context: Cardiovascular disease is a very common and serious problem in the western world. Sta-tin drug therapy is used in primary, secondary prevention and familial hypercholesterolemia. However, these are frequently associated with adverse effects, causing poor adherence and thus putting patients at risk for future cardiovascular events. Aim: The objective of this study was to review the statin intolerance in lipid patients and to assess the impact of alternative lipid lowering therapy on lipid parameters and cardiovascular outcome in statin intolerant patients. Methodol-ogy: 50 patients attending the out-patient lipid clinic of our hospital with statin intolerance were identified. Clinical data on the study patients were gathered retrospectively relating to statin in-tolerance and the clinical effectiveness of alternative lipid lowering therapy on lipid parameters and cardiovascular outcome. Results: Rosuvastatin was the most intolerable whereas pravastatin or fluvastatin was the most tolerable statin in our study patients. Myalgia was the commonly re-ported adverse effect of statin. The low dose statin monotherapy or combination of low dose statin and ezetemibe was the most tolerable alternative lipid lowering therapy in statin intolerant pa-tients. After an average period of 10 months of initiation of alternative lipid lowering therapy