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A patient with heart disease having myalgia with statin therapy: a challenging case history
Recent articles on:
Lipid disorders
Lipid disorders
Abstract
How should a patient with generalised myalgia secondary to high-dose statin therapy be managed?
Key Points
- Statin drugs, in addition to other medications, form an essential part of therapy after a patient has had a myocardial infarction.
- Statins occasionally induce myalgia of varying severity in the short or longer term. Changes in the concentration of the muscle enzyme creatine kinase may not be diagnostic.
- Provided that other causes of myalgia have been excluded, patients may be tried on other statin drugs.
- One approach in such cases is for patients to take a very small dose of rosuvastatin, initially 2.5 or 5 mg on two days per week, which may avoid the return of myalgia yet still offer potential benefit.
- Unfortunately, some patients may experience a return of muscle symptoms with other statins and future lipid therapy may be very challenging.
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