Thursday, July 16th 2026
The new discovery shows that the problem may be hidden in a deeper mechanism, which until now was not fully explained
Millions of people around the world rely on statins, a class of drugs that are considered the gold standard for lowering cholesterol and reducing the risk of heart attack and stroke.
However, in a significant number of patients, this therapy can cause serious problems: muscle pain, weakness and marked intolerance to physical activity.
Now, researchers at McMaster University in Canada have identified the immune and metabolic mechanism that promotes muscle tissue damage, changing the assumptions so far about the side effects of this life-saving therapy.
A problem that affects up to 29 percent of patients
The new study by scientists from McMaster University, published in the prestigious journal Science Advances, has revealed the biological pathway that explains why these effects occur
This finding opens up the possibility of developing future therapies that could ease the toleration of statins, while fully maintaining their cardiovascular benefits.
According to estimates, muscle symptoms caused by statins affect between 7 and 29 percent of people who use these drugs.
“Statins are among the most effective drugs we have for reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease and preventing death. “Unfortunately, side effects in the muscles cause many patients to reduce the dose on their own initiative or stop treatment altogether. We wanted to understand why this happens and if it is possible to separate these side effects from the benefits of anti-cholesterol drugs,” explains the study’s lead author, Dr. Jonathan Schertzer, professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at McMaster University.
Unexpected link between metabolism and immunity
The research team, led by study authors Nazli Robin and Nicole Barra from the Schertzer Lab at McMaster University, discovered that statins can disrupt the way muscle cells produce energy.
This, in turn, triggers a specific immune response within the cells themselves. It is this localized immune response and the subsequent inflammation that leads to muscle tissue damage.
In experiments with laboratory mice and human muscle cells, scientists were able to prevent much of the muscle damage by successfully blocking this immune response.
The benefit of anti-cholesterol drugs can be separated from the side effects
The most interesting finding of this research is that the mechanism that causes muscle pain is completely independent of the mechanism through which statins lower cholesterol in the liver.
This means that the mechanism of drug action and the mechanism of side effects are separate. This opens the possibility for the pharmaceutical industry, in the future, to develop targeted drugs or supplements that would block inflammation in the muscles, while statins would continue to protect the patient’s blood vessels and heart without hindrance.
Although additional clinical studies are needed before these laboratory results can be translated into official protocols for patients, the study has pinpointed some possible biological targets for developing new drugs and solving the problem of intolerance. to statins.
Source: prizrenpost
