statins can cause muscle damage

[Guest guest]

As is usual, this article barely touches on reality, but hedges its bets so to speak... Taken

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/11/05/statins.heart.failure/

 

Since statins can cause muscle damage, they could theoretically also harm the heart--which is, essentially, a big muscle--although there is no evidence that this is the case. To investigate whether the drugs might affect the heart and other muscles in heart failure patients, Cahalin and his colleagues analyzed data on lung function and exercise tolerance in 136 patients, 61 of whom were taking statins.

Overall, the patients taking statins had worse lung function and exercise tolerance than those who weren't taking the drugs. But when Cahalin and his team analyzed patients with the two different types of heart failure--systolic and diastolic--separately, they found the drugs seemed to help those with the systolic version, and hurt those with diastolic heart failure.