Strategies to Address Statin Medication Intolerance Among Patients at Risk of Cardiovascular Disease Identified...

Statins are a group of medications that lower lipid and are used for primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). Patients can either be partially (15%) or completely (5%) intolerant to statins. Symptoms of statin intolerance can include muscle aches (myalgia), weakness, cramps, myopathy, diabetes mellitus, and elevated creatine kinase levels. Decreasing statin intolerance also improves statin adherence, which in turn results in lower number of CVD events among patients. Studies on statin intolerance is often embedded within studies of statin adherence. However, relevant data can be obtained from digital health systems. This preliminary literature review looks at studies from the past 10 years to identify and determine the effectiveness of strategies to address statin intolerance. The NLA definition for statin intolerance was used in this review. The initial search results on EMBASE, PubMed, SCOPUS, and CINAHL showed 91 articles and applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, four articles were used in this review and pooled analysis. The study patients were identified through electronic health records. The pooled analysis was done using the Metafor package in R, applying a random-effect model to estimate pooled effect size. The findings suggest that using fixed dose combination therapy and switching from a lipophilic statin to a hydrophilic statin, while correcting metabolic abnormalities, or initiating evolocumab alongside statin can address statin intolerance. The overall relative risk (RR) was 0.40 (95% CI, 0.09 to 1.70) with I2 90%, and the overall odds ratio (OR) was 0.11 (95% CI, 0.01 to 1.59) with I2 94%, suggesting that the interventions work well in addressing statin intolerance. Since statin intolerance is has a vast range of effects, further research works may be done on exploring the possibility of using digital health systems to identify and provide targeted interventions to patients.