Statin use and risk of diabetes mellitus in postmenopausal women

Abstract

Evaluation of: Culver AL, Ockene IS, Balasubramanian R et al. Statin use and risk of diabetes mellitus in postmenopausal women in the Women’s Health Initiative. Arch. Intern. Med. 172(2), 144–152 (2012). Previous data suggest an association between statin therapy and risk of incident diabetes mellitus (DM). In this study, a total of 153,840 nondiabetic postmenopausal women from the Women’s Health Initiative were investigated with regard to statin treatment (recorded at baseline and after 3 years). Statin use was related to an increased risk of DM (hazard ratio: 1.71; 95% CI: 1.61–1.83). This association was found in both women with and without cardiovascular disease at baseline and remained significant after multivariate adjustments for confounding factors, as well as for all statins evaluated (i.e., high- and low-potency statins). Statin use was also significantly associated with an increased risk of DM in subgroup analyses by age, race/ethnicity and BMI (statin-related DM risk was higher in women 50–59 ...