Was the statin causing the pain or was it a coincidence?
Problems with cholesterol lowering drugs in polio survivors redux…again! I’ve written two columns about cholesterol-lowering drugs potentially causing unique problems in polio survivors. The first column was published five years ago. The buzz in the post-polio community then was that rhabdomyolysis –a very serious condition where kidney and muscle tissues breakdown — occurred more frequently in polio survivors who take statins, the then newish cholesterol-lowering drugs. There have been no specific studies of cholesterol-lowering drugs in polio survivors, but there seemed to be no reason polio survivors would be more prone to rhabdomyolysis. Only about one-half of 1% of anyone who takes a statin, such as Lipitor, develops rhabdomyolysis, which can indeed cause muscle pain (usually in the calves), muscle weakness and possibly even kidney failure. With rhabdomyolysis, the enzyme creatine phosphokinase (CK, also called CPK) is released as muscle breaks down, CK sometimes increasing to
