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Serum Proinflammatory Chemokines in Healthy Elderly Taking or not Taking Simvastatin - Data from the Brisighella
Sergio D'Addato1, Arrigo F G Cicero1, Martina Rosticci1
1Medicine and Surgery Sciences Department, University of Bologna, Italy.
Background:
Recent preclinical evidence and data from adult subjects suggests that statins could improve the proinflammatory profile of hypercholesterolemic subjects.
Objectives:
We aim to compare the serum levels of a set of proinflammatory chemokines in elderly statistical twins taking or not taking statins.
Material And Methods:
Among the historical cohort of the Brisighella Heart Study, we chose 40 healthy elderly subjects continuously treated with statins for at least 1 year and 40 cross-matched subjects not treated with statins (M : F = 1 : 1) characterized by similar age, body mass index (BMI), leisure-time and working activity, smoking habits, history of cardiovascular disease, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, fasting plasma glucose, plasma lipids, uric acid, and creatinine.
Results:
The proinflammatory chemokine serum level is similar in statin untreated and treated statistical twins. The OR to have a serum level of monocyte chemoattractant protein (MCP-1) lower than the 50th percentile of the distribution in statin-treated subjects compared to the statin untreated subjects is 0.669 (95% CI 0.193; 2.327), the OR for interleukin-8 (IL-8) = 0.818 (95% CI 0.236; 2.835), the OR for γ-interferon inducible protein-10 (IP-10) = 1.361 (95% CI 0.358; 5.175), and for interleukin-18 (IL-18) = 0.545 (95% CI 0.155; 1.914).
Conclusions:
In relatively healthy, elderly subjects selected from a randomized general population sample, we did not observe differences in the serum levels of the selected set of proinflammatory chemokines in statin treated and untreated subjects with similar LDL-C level, suggesting that cholesterol reduction per se could be a main determinant of statin anti-inflammatory effects.