Statins and PMR?

[Annodomini]

Someone has suggested to me that taking statins increases your chances of getting PMR. Is there any basis to this? I take 40mg of simvastatin every night and it has done wonders for my cholesterol which wouldn't shift on a strict diet.

[Polywotsit PMRGCAuk team member]

Oh now here's a tricky one........ we don't know of any research linking PMR to statins, and PMR was known well before statins were in use. The trouble now is that so many people are on statins that the chances of you being on statins when you are diagnosed with PMR is really quite high! But that would be complete coincidence. However, some of us who've been thinking about PMR and GCA for several years now suspect that there might be some connection that's not causal but perhaps correlation. For example, if blood cholesterol is high or has been high for years but untreated, might there be damage to the circulatory system that would make a person more prone to PMR? It seems that nobody knows - nobody can say for sure. PMR and GCA have been terribly under-researched diseases. (Old ladies get them - nuff said). For every one research project on PMR in any one year there are 20 (yes, twenty) on Rheumatoid Arthritis. But this is changing - there is much more interest now in PMR. It's as though the rheumatology world is waking up to it. It might not do us much good, but we might be involved in research that will make life easier for people who get PMR and GCA in the future.

ps I was on statins, then off them, now back on them again. Statins can cause muscle pain, sometimes really bad muscle pain, in some people. But this is not PMR. Hope this helps - the statins really are reducing your risk of stroke.

Let's post a poll to find out how many people are on statins.

ps Here is where I better remind readers that I'm not medically qualified!

[Annodomini in reply to Polywotsit]

That is more or less what I thought. Thanks very much for confirming it. Do you think that if you have one auto-immune condition you are more likely to have another? I have hypothyroidism which I believe is auto-immune.

[Polywotsit PMRGCAuk team member]

In a word, yes.