BMJ  2008;336:624-625 (22 March), doi:10.1136/bmj.39483.665139.80 (published 25 February 2008)

Editorials

Statins for people with kidney disease

Criteria for treatment should be the same as for people with normal kidney function

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

In the accompanying paper, Strippoli and colleagues report a meta-analysis of the benefits and harms of statins in patients with chronic kidney disease. They report outcomes for people with low glomerular filtration rate, those on dialysis, and those with kidney transplants.¹

Chronic kidney disease (glomerular filtration rate < 60 ml/min/1.73 m² or urine abnormalities) and cardiovascular disease often coexist; chronic kidney disease also predicts cardiovascular events. A recent meta-analysis reported that low glomerular filtration rate was associated with an unadjusted relative risk of 2.5 (95% confidence interval 1.4 to 4.3) for cardiovascular events.² In adjusted analyses, some of this effect is explained by the high prevalence of traditional risk factors for cardiovascular disease in people with low glomerular filtration rate or albuminuria.^{3 4} However, non-traditional risk factors such as anaemia (which in patients on dialysis predicts left ventricular hypertrophy, systolic dysfunction, and congestive heart failure⁵) and factors favouring vascular calcification . . . [Full text of this article]

¹ McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8N 1Y2

Related Article

Effects of statins in patients with chronic kidney disease: meta-analysis and meta-regression of randomised controlled trials

Giovanni F M Strippoli, Sankar D Navaneethan, David W Johnson, Vlado Perkovic, Fabio Pellegrini, Antonio Nicolucci, and Jonathan C Craig
BMJ 2008 336: 645-651. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]