Statins may impede muscle repair and regeneration

Lab experiments indicate that high doses of the popular cholesterol-lowering statin drugs reduce the ability of progenitor muscle cells to multiply and then repair and regenerate damaged muscles.

The findings were reported at the American Physiological Society conference called The Integrative Biology of Exercise V, which wrapped up Saturday in Hilton Head, South Carolina.

Muscle progenitor cell, called satellite cells, “have to proliferate in order to repair and regenerate muscle,” Dr. Anna Thalacker-Mercer from the University of Alabama at Birmingham told Reuters Health. Statins have antiproliferative effects, “so perhaps Statins are decreasing proliferation of satellite cells and that might be some of the adverse effects that are occurring in the muscle.”

Thalacker-Mercer and her colleagues isolated human satellite cells, grew them in culture, and treated them with simvastatin, better know by the brand name Zocor. “We did find that cell viability and proliferation was decreased,” she said.

In fact, at a concentration equivalent to that in the circulation from a 40-milligram dose of simvastatin used in some patients, the viability of the proliferating cells was reduced by half.

“While these are preliminary data and more research is necessary,” Thalacker-Mercer said, “the results indicate serious adverse effects of Statins that may alter the ability of skeletal muscle to repair and regenerate.”

Some research, she noted, suggests that satellite cell viability and number decrease with age. “If the satellite cell population is less in an aging adult or isn’t able to proliferate like in a younger person, then adding Statins on top of that you may have double whammy,” she commented.

By Megan Rauscher
NEW YORK (Reuters Health)