Statins may help kidney transplant patients: study

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cholesterol-fighting statin drugs, already known to help ward off heart attack and stroke, may help people who have received a kidney transplant live longer, researchers said on Wednesday.

The study, published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, is the latest to show that this widely used class of drugs may provide additional health benefits beyond lowering blood cholesterol levels.

Researchers led by Dr. Rainer Oberbauer of the Medical University of Vienna in Austria tracked 2,041 patients who underwent kidney transplants between 1990 and 2003. At the time of the operation, 302 were taking statin drugs to lower blood cholesterol levels and 1,739 were not.

After being followed for 12 years, 73 percent of the people taking statins were alive, compared to 64 percent of those who were not taking statins, the researchers said.

About 60 percent of patients with kidney transplants die of cardiovascular disease, the researchers noted, and statins have been shown to be effective against cardiovascular disease.

After statistically accounting for factors such as the fact that people on statins have more cardiovascular risk factors and disease, the researchers found that the kidney transplant patients who were taking statins had a 36 percent lower risk of death during the study than those not using the drugs.

"This study provides evidence that statin treatment is associated with reduced all-cause mortality in renal transplant recipients," the researchers wrote.

They said further research is needed to confirm that statins are causing the improvements.