Terminally ill patients could benefit from stopping statins, study says

Discontinuing treatment with statins in patients with terminal illnesses is safe, could improve quality of life, and could reduce costs, US research published in JAMA Internal Medicine concludes.1

The pragmatic randomized trial looked at 381 patients with a mean age of 74.1 years. Half of the patients had cancer, and all had an estimated life expectancy of between one month and one year. The patients had been taking prescribed statins for three months or more for primary or secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease but had no recent active cardiovascular disease. Researchers randomized 189 …