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Statin use linked with decreased risk for cholecystectomy
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Long-term use of statins was associated with a reduced risk for gallstone disease followed by cholecystectomy, results from a large observational study suggested.
Researchers included 27,035 patients with cholecystectomy and 106,531 controls from the United Kingdom–based General Practice Research Database in the case-control analysis. Among those, 2,396 patients and 8,868 controls were assigned statins. The primary outcome measure was the adjusted OR for the development of gallstone disease followed by cholecystectomy in association with exposure to lipid-lowering agents.
Current statin use, defined as the last prescription recorded within 90 days before first-time diagnosis of the disease, was varied. The researchers reported that compared with nonuse, current statin use was 1% for patients vs. 0.8% for controls, with an adjusted OR of 1.10 (95% CI, 0.95-1.27) for one to four statin prescriptions; 2.6% vs. 2.4% (adjusted OR=0.85; 95% CI, 0.77-0.93) for five to 19 prescriptions; and 3.2% vs. 3.7% (adjusted OR=0.64; 95% CI, 0.59-0.70) for 20 or more prescriptions.
“This large observational study provides evidence that long-term use of statins is associated with a decreased risk of developing a diagnosis of gallstone disease requiring cholecystectomy,” the researchers concluded. “Our findings may be of clinical relevance given that gallstone disease represents a major burden for health care systems.”
Bodmer M. JAMA. 2009;302:2001-2007.