ALERT: Popular Drug Increases Diabetes Risk By Almost 50%

Vivian Goldschmidt, MA Drugs

Evidence-Based
2 min Read
alert

A new study by the University of Massachusetts Medical School has found that women in their 50’s, 60’s and 70’s who took statins to lower cholesterol had a 48 percent greater chance of becoming diabetic than women who did not take the statin drugs.1

And as you'll read in today's alert, this may also apply to bisphosphonates such as Fosamax, Boniva, Actonel, Atelvia, and Reclast.

Lead researcher Yunsheng Ma and team kept track of the 150,000 study participants for six to seven years to determine how many would be diagnosed with diabetes.

The study results – and researchers’ conclusion – have sent the medical establishment scrambling for ways to defend the widespread use of statins.

The news agency Reuters quotes Dr. David Jenkins, a chronic disease researcher at the University of Toronto, voicing a stunning opinion. He comments that doctors consider developing Type II diabetes:

“A very fair trade-off, since statins lower the risk of heart disease, the primary concern related to diabetes.”2

Indeed, this could be a potentially very widespread trade-off, since according to Reuters, “about one-quarter of adults age 45 and older in the United States now take statins – which run anywhere from $11 to over $200 per month.”2

Aside from your amazement at this skewed way of thinking, you’re probably wondering how this latest statin fiasco relates to bone health. As I write in the Osteoporosis Reversal Program,

“Like statins – drugs used to lower blood cholesterol levels – bisphosphonates begin their action on bone metabolism by blocking the enzyme farnesyl diphosphate synthase (FPPS) which is involved in the mevalonate pathway (also called the HMG-CoA reductase pathway).”

In other words, both statins and bisphosphonates disrupt the same enzymatic processes. This is a real cause for concern because it's conceivable that in the not-so-distant future, researchers will discover similar results in study patients who take bisphosphonates. Perhaps one day, a researcher will make the connection and conduct the study.

In the meantime, this is yet one more good reason to stay away from these osteoporosis drugs.

Till next time,

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References

1 https://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/archinternmed.2011.625
2 https://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/09/us-statin-diabetes-idUSTRE80826K20120109