- A new study suggests that taking statins may help reduce the risk of death from severe COVID-19.
- In the study, people who took statins regularly before developing COVID-19 were about 50% less likely to die in the hospital than people who did not.
- The use of statins also appeared to reduce the patient’s C-reactive protein levels, a marker of inflammation.
- If more studies support these findings, this could provide a low-risk, widely available and cost-effective treatment option for COVID-19.
About 40 million people living in the United States take statins to help reduce cholesterol levels and the risk of heart disease.
But statins can also have a strong anti-inflammatory, blood-clotting and antiviral effect, all of which can help limit the complications associated with severe COVID-19.
That is why researchers are trying to find out whether the use of statins affects the results of COVID-19.
In a new study, a group of researchers, including cardiologists who care for patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in New York, compared patient outcomes between people who used statins before hospitalization and those who did not.
“Our study is one of the largest studies that confirm this hypothesis, and the data lay the foundation for future randomized controlled trials that are needed to confirm the benefit of statins in COVID-19,” says the study’s co-author, Dr. Aakriti Gupta, MD, cardiologist at NewYork-Presbyterian / Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
If a successful clinical trial validates the researchers’ findings, statins may represent a low-cost, easy-to-access and relatively safe treatment option for COVID-19.
Currently, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved only one drug to treat COVID-19 – remdesivir (Veklury). However, some other medications can be beneficial during certain stages of the disease.
The study appears in Nature Communications.
Statins are the most common type of medication that people use to lower cholesterol levels.
According to the American Heart Association, they work predominantly by blocking a specific cholesterol-producing enzyme, causing less cholesterol production and release.
But statins also appear to have a strong anti-inflammatory, anti-coagulant and antiviral effect. They can also help to improve wound healing in organs such as the lungs.
Researchers are also exploring whether statins can help treat viral infections that can lead to serious complications, such as widespread inflammation, clotting and associated cell damage.
One of the most serious complications associated with COVID-19 and other respiratory infections is the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). However, research that assessed the impact of statin use on ARDS did not show any benefit on a large scale.
Despite this, a 2018 study found that the use of statins improved results in people with a hyperinflammatory subtype of ARDS.
A 2017 study found that people who take statins on admission to hospital for community-acquired pneumonia are less likely to die than people who do not.
The researchers are now trying to assess whether statins could be useful in the context of COVID-19.
A 2020 study in Singapore found that people who take statins are less likely to be admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) than people who do not.
Additional research found that people with COVID-19 who started taking statins after being hospitalized but did not undergo treatment in the ICU were 47% less likely to die.
Researchers in the U.S. have also recently discovered that statin use before hospitalization can reduce the risk of developing severe COVID-19 by 50%.
The study also noted that people with COVID-19 who were taking statins before admission to the hospital had better recovery times.
Scientists think this may be because, in addition to reducing inflammation, the risk of clots and cell damage, statins also remove cholesterol from the outer membranes of cells.
SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, binds and enters cells by attaching viral peak proteins to a cell’s angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE-2) receptors.
These receptors are on a raft of lipids, a part of the cell membrane that contains cholesterol, proteins like ACE-2 and other fats and proteins.
And studies show that removing cholesterol from these lipid rafts means that coronaviruses cannot enter cells, even after binding.
In the new study, the researchers compared the results in 648 patients with COVID-19 hospitalized during the first 18 weeks of the pandemic who normally used statins and 648 patients who did not.
They also combined patients in each group to reduce major demographic differences, use of other medications and conditions that increase the risk of severe COVID-19.
Based on their analysis, in the study, 14.8% of people taking statins died in the hospital within a month after admission, compared with 26.5% of patients who did not take statins.
Once the researchers considered the main differences between patients, they found that the use of statins reduced the risk of in-hospital mortality by about 1 month after hospital admission by approximately 50%.
People taking statins also have lower levels of compounds associated with inflammation, such as C-reactive protein.
The current study represents one of the largest Western studies of its kind to indicate a positive link between the survival of COVID-19 and the use of statins.
But researchers must confirm these findings with larger, randomized studies that reduce the risk of unexplained or unexplained influencing factors. For example, in the retrospective study, it was not clear how long ago people who take statins use them or how rigorously they take them.
“If its beneficial effect is proven in randomized controlled trials, statins can be an effective and low-cost therapeutic strategy for COVID-19,” says study co-author Dr. Mahesh V. Madhavan, MD, the cardiologist at NewYork-Presbyterian / Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
Researchers will also have to find out whether the effectiveness or usefulness of statins in the treatment of COVID-19 varies between populations and countries.
At the moment, several randomized studies are underway to find out whether the use of statins can reduce the risk of hospitalization for COVID-19 and the risk of death in hospitalized patients.
One of the study’s authors, Dr. Behnood Bikdeli, a vascular medicine researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA., Is conducting a randomized study exploring the impact of statin use on ICU patients COVID-19 in Iran.
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