Statins, cholesterol and vitamin D
It is well known that medications called statins reduce the amount of cholesterol in the blood. This is the reason for which millions of people take them, and this is their only licensed use. There are however several anomalies.
First, statins are of equal value to people with low levels of cholesterol in the blood as to those with high levels. Second, the benefit is the same no matter the amount by which the blood level of cholesterol is reduced. These facts immediately suggest that the undoubted, and greater than expected, value of statins might be due to a property other than their ability to reduce cholesterol.
Statins have a very specific metabolic effect in the inhibition of an enzyme called HMG-CoA reductase. True as this undoubtedly is, statins also have other metabolic effects, the nature of which are unknown or unpublished.
The unexpected published benefits of statins include the following:
- Reduced incidence of new diabetes
- Reduced rejection rate after kidney and heart transplantation
- Reduced incidence of colon, lung and prostate cancers
- Improvement of multiple sclerosis
- Improvement of rheumatoid arthritis
- Increased bone density of post-menopausal women
- Improvement of heart failure
- Reduction of the incidence of infections
- Increase in stem cell production in the heart
- Improvement in tissue repair
- Reduction of blood pressure
- Anti-inflammatory effects and reduction of TNFµ (inflammatory mediator)
- Enhancement of immunity
We are accustomed to drugs having unforeseen and undesirable side-effects, but it is most unusual, even unprecedented, for a drug to have such a wide range of unexpected beneficial effects. They are clearly doing something fundamental to the body, something that has nothing whatsoever to do with cholesterol lowering.
It is as though statins are a vitamin, as clearly they have a vitamin-like beneficial effect. Are they somehow a new hitherto undiscovered vitamin? Or are they mimicking a known vitamin? If so, which vitamin is it?
The wide range of benefits is very similar to the known effects of vitamin D. It would therefore appear that statins are acting like vitamin D, activating vitamin D receptors in the body.
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Bill replied on: 2010-12-20 14:14:52
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