New test shows source of disease side-effects

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A new panel of tests aimed at finding out how drugs may damage cells has turned up a series of interactions that may explain some of the serious side-effects of statin drugs, researchers said on Sunday.

Statins, the wildly popular cholesterol-lowering drugs, may interact with at least one blood pressure drug to damage the mitochondria, the powerhouses of cells, the researchers reported in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

Their study also may lead to the development of drugs to treat diabetes and diseases of aging and better ways to screen for drug side-effects, the researchers said.

Vamsi Mootha of the Broad Institute at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said they had made their new database freely available to other scientists to use for screening drugs.

The mitochondria are structures in cells that make adenosine triphosphate, or ATP, which helps power cells. Mootha's team tested more than 2,000 drugs on cells to see how they might interfere with this process.

Their test looks at gene function, ATP levels and other measures of how well the mitochondria are working.

Many patients who take statins have reported side-effects that include muscle pain and weakness. The cause is not well understood but Mootha has long suspected the mitochondria are involved. The effects have been hard to pin down because studies of different groups have produced conflicting results.

Mootha's team said their findings showed some statins lower ATP levels and interfere with the mitochondria.