Kidney injury and Statin

"High-potency" statins linked to acute kidney injury in analysis

MARCH 19, 2013 Steve Stiles

Montreal, QC - Taking statins at "high-potency" dosages, with levels depending on the agent, appears to raise the adjusted risk of acute kidney injury by 34% over the first four months of treatment, compared with taking lower-dose statins, suggests an analysis [1].

In the study, from Dr Colin R Dormuth (University of British Columbia, Vancouver) and colleagues and based on data from observational cohorts predominantly in Canada but also the UK and US, the high-potency statins wererosuvastatin (Crestor, AstraZeneca) at >10 mg/day, atorvastatin at >20 mg/day, and simvastatin at >40 mg/day. Statins at other dosages were defined as "low-potency."

The findings were published online today in BMJ.

From a total of 2 067 639 patients aged >40 years who started on statin therapy for the first time from 1997 to 2008, including almost 60 000 patients with a history of chronic kidney disease (CKD), each patient hospitalized with acute kidney injury over the next 120 days was propensity-matched to 10 who didn't develop acute kidney injury.

The rate ratio (RR) for hospitalization for acute kidney injury for users of high-potency vs low-potency statins was 1.34 (95% CI 1.25-1.43) for those without a CKD history and a nonsignificant 1.10 (95% CI 0.99-1.23) for those with a history of CKD./.../