Ankylosing spondylitis is a chronic joint inflammation. It is manifested by painful flare-ups interspersed with lulls called periods of remission. To reduce inflammatory flare-ups, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston (USA) set out to explore the potential benefits of statinsprescribed medications people with cholesterol.
Doctors tested these drugs in patients with ankylosing spondylitis and in other patients with psoriatic arthritis, a chronic form of rheumatism that affects the skin and joints. These two diseases increase the risk of death from cardiovascular complications.
For their study, the researchers, led by Dr. Amar Oza, analyzed a UK database that included 2,904 patients with one of the two diseases who started taking statins between 2000 and 2014. This group was matched with a control group of 2900 patients not taking statins.
At the end of a follow-up of more than 5 years, 271 patients on statins died while in the other group 376 patients died. This allowed the researchers to conclude that taking statins reduced the risk of mortality by 33%.
The team speculates that this benefit is due to both anti-inflammatory and lipid-lowering (cholesterol-lowering) properties of statins.
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