Do statins increase the risk of developing pneumonia?

For a long time in the medical environment, the myth was cultivated that statins are drugs that lower the level of cholesterol in the blood (among drugs such representatives can act Atoris, Simvastatin and many others) can also affect the course of acute infectious diseases. It was even thought that statins could be used to treat such diseases, such as, for example, pneumonia.

To be honest, a special correlation at the reception in the clinic between patients taking cholesterol-lowering drugs, and those to whom they are not shown I did not notice, the more this statement seemed controversial.

A group of scientists from the United States decided to study this phenomenon and conducted a study on a group of about 1,500 volunteers who were divided into two equal groups, one part of which was taking statins, and the other was not. Naturally, correction factors were introduced immediately, since cholesterol-lowering drugs were prescribed for the bulk of people with poor health indicators, which could affect the final results of the study. What was established in the end?

The incidence rate of pneumonia in the host statin group was higher than in the group of subjects who did not take these drugs. But ... With the overlay of correction factors, these indices in both groups practically equalized, that is, there was no statistically significant difference.

Thus, it can be concluded that the drugs reducing the level of cholesterol in the blood, on the one hand do not increase the risk of developing pneumonia in patients (including in the long term, which was shown by the study in two groups of volunteers), on the other - do not lead to reduce the risk of developing this infectious disease in patients taking these drugs. That is, with respect to pneumonia statins behave indifferently, without providing significant pharmacological effects.