Peer Reviewed
Case studies

A patient with heart disease having myalgia with statin therapy: a challenging case history

Leon A Simons
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.
Get full access
Subscribe for full access to all articles
Buy this article

Single article purchases are temporarily unavailable due to site maintenance.

If you would like to purchase an article during this time, please email us at [email protected] with the article details and we'll assist you directly. We'll also let you know when online purchasing is available again.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Already a subscriber?