Statin Mechanism of Damage Verified


Only a few years ago the scientific community was not even acknowledging the presence of significant side effects from the use of statin drugs, say nothing of studying them.

But increasingly now the research community has been investigating the dark side of reductase inhibitors, touted for years as "So free of side effects they should be put into the drinking water."

Recently Wahl D and others of the Dept. of Vascular Medicine, Nancy, France reported in Elsevier on the mechanisms of statin associated myopathy, defining lack of availability of CoQ10 as playing an important causative role. They also demonstrated the benefit of supplemental CoQ10 both in the prevention and treatment of statin myopathy.

As if on cue, Tavintharan S and others of the Alexander Hospital in Singapore reported in Toxicity and Applied Pharmacology of their study on the effects of Zocor on liver cell cultures. They found this statin drug caused liver cell inflammation, decreased levels of mitochondrial CoQ10, increased cell death, increased oxidative damage and decreased synthesis of ATP. Lack of CoQ10 not only allows oxygen to damage our mitochondria, leading to high-level mutations, it also reduces ATP, our energy resource leading to heart failure and a variety of other things, all bad.

Many readers might recall I postulated these effects years ago based purely on existing knowledge of the effect of CoQ10 in the human body. We know CoQ10 is responsible for cell wall integrity, energy and anti-oxidation and I felt loss of cell wall integrity might contribute directly to liver inflammation as well. This work confirms the predictions of metabolic consequences of CoQ10 lack across the board.

The loss of anti-oxidation capacity secondary to CoQ10 lack deserves far more study. Our mitochondria are front line warriors in the sense of having to work directly in the toxicity of a high oxygen environment. Without sufficient anti-oxidation, somatic mutations can rapidly damage the energy producing capacity of our mitochondria. They are extremely vulnerable to oxidation.

Interesting that as many as twelve years ago Merck filed for and was granted a patent for a combined statin / CoQ10 pill indicating that the researchers there were well aware of the damage to come from widespread statin use. I can only surmise that the thoughts of these enlightened personnel were over-ridden by management in favor of marketing considerations.

It is safe to say that the biochemists of all drug companies are fully aware of the problems to come from reductase inhibition of the mevalonate pathway. They better than anyone have been well aware that CoQ10, dolichols, selenoproteins and tau proteins are inevitably affected by statins in today's high doses but their management has chosen to ignore this. Unfortunately for them the problem has not gone away. It has increased tragically as statin sales have sky-rocketed.

Duane Graveline MD MPH
Former USAF Flight Surgeon
Former NASA Astronaut
Retired Family Doctor

Books From Amazon

The Dark Side of Statins
The Statin Damage Crisis
Cholesterol is Not the Culprit
Statin Drugs Side Effects
Lipitor, Thief of Memory

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