Study: Statin Therapy Doesn’t Reduce Fracture Risk

A new analysis finds that statin therapy does not protect against the risk of fracture in men or women.

In a pre-specified analysis, a team of investigators also found that patients in the JUPITER study—a trial aimed at evaluating whether statins reduce heart attacks and strokes in individuals with normal cholesterol levels—with higher baseline high-sensitivity C-reactive protein levels did not have a higher risk of fracture than those with lower high-sensitivity C-reactive protein levels.
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The researchers pre-specified fracture as a secondary end point in the JUPITER trial, with the goal of determining whether the drug rosuvastatin lowered fracture risk in men 50 years old or older as well as women age 60 and older with elevated C-reactive protein levels at baseline. Patients were followed for a median of 1.9 years, with 431 incident fractures confirmed in the trial.

Researchers found 221 and 210 fractures, respectively, in statin- and placebo-treated arms; a difference the investigators deemed not statistically significant. The team also found no considerable differences between the statin and placebo arms when analyzing the JUPITER data by fracture type, and found that neither women nor men benefited from statin therapy with respect to reducing their risk of fracture. 

Lead author Elizabeth Pena, MD, an assistant professor of cardiology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and colleagues say the results don’t provide evidence of statin therapy as a means of lowering the risk of fracture in treated patients.

“The findings of our study, using rosuvastatin in doses used for cardiovascular disease and treatment,” says Pena, “do not support the use of statins for the prevention of bone fractures.”

—Mark McGraw

Reference

Pena J, Aspberg S, et al. Statin therapy and risk of fracture: Results from the JUPITER randomized clinical trial. JAMA Intern Med. 2014.