Take your 'sieg heil' and shove it up your ass. Re

Take your 'sieg heil' and shove it up your ass. Resorting to the Nazi card is always the sign of a meritless argument.

I'm on an aggressive Statin (Atorvastatin 80mg) regimen, so spare me your anecdotes.

Did you friend tell you that the doctor told HIM that the heart attack was DUE to cholesterol that was too low?

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Do statins really age you faster?

On Sunday the Express front page warned us that ‘statins age you faster’. But what does the research really show?



Suzi Gage



Monday 28 September 2015 01.30 EDT Last modified on Wednesday 20 September 2017 14.42 EDT


A lot of people are on statins. The British Heart Foundation state on their website that they are the most commonly prescribed drug in the UK. They’re taken predominately by middle aged men, some who have already suffered heart problems, and some who haven’t but fit in to an ‘at risk’ category that predicts cardiovascular disease.

But there are often scare stories around statins (I’ve written about this before), perhaps because they’re so widely prescribed, so it can be hard to work out what’s really known, or not known about them.

On Sunday, the Express’ front page claimed that ‘Statins age you faster’. The study it was referring to was published in July this year in the journal Cell Physiology. The research involved taking fat tissue biopsies from healthy people and extracting stem cells, and then exposing the stem cell samples to one of two types of statin. Stem cells are special cells that are found in fat tissue (and various other tissues), that can differentiate in to a variety of other specific types of cells, and are involved in tissue repair in adults.

The researchers found that the stem cells exposed to statins changed in to immune cells at lower levels than those that weren’t exposed to statins. The authors think this might be beneficial to the prevention of cardio-vascular disease, as there’s some suggestion that lower levels of these immune cells are associated with less inflammation in patients with cardio-vascular disease.

But the authors also studied how long it took each sample to double in proliferation, and noted that the statin treated samples grew more slowly, which they suggest could be linked to premature aging.

So, while these findings are interesting and potentially important, there’s quite a large leap from these studies of minced fat cells to the conclusion that being treated with statins will lead a person to age prematurely.

Science doesn’t yet fully understand what mechanisms at a cellular level cause aging. Stem cell proliferation speed is associated with aging. However, it is not the only mechanism that has been shown to be, and which ones are causal has not really been determined.


Interestingly, another study recently reported that statins could slow aging, as they were found to be associated with longer telomere length.

Telomeres are the areas at the end of the chromosomes, 23 pairs of which contain the DNA in each cell in your body. They are areas of repetitive DNA, thought to protect the chromosome itself from deterioration, and their shortening has been associated with premature aging.

This study measured telomerase activity in the blood of people who were either undergoing statin treatment or were not, and found it was increased in those on statins. Telomerase activity is associated with longer telomeres.

Statins do have side effects, all medication does to some extent. And some of those side effects reported could also be deemed to be signs of premature aging. Memory loss and weakness or fatigue are both listed under ‘uncommon side effects’ on the NHS website.


But these are alongside a cautionary note, describing a study that found little evidence of a difference in side effect symptoms between people on statins and those given an inert placebo medication.

Given that statins are often prescribed at a time in someone’s life when they might feasibly be starting to experience some of the ‘symptoms’ of aging, it can be hard to tease out whether such changes are due to a medication or not.

Of course, it’s perfectly possible that statins can improve some biological functions associated with aging and worsen others. Any decision to prescribe a medication needs to weigh up the potential benefits and the potential harms, and should be a decision between a GP or consultant and a patient.

Headlines that extrapolate from one cell culture study and use causal language won’t make these decisions any easier and if anything are more likely to confuse patients and their physicians.

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