Chest
Original ResearchNovel PharmacotherapyInfluenza and COPD Mortality Protection as Pleiotropic, Dose-Dependent Effects of Statins
Section snippets
Materials and Methods
We conducted a matched cohort study and two case-control studies to evaluate whether statin use is associated with a reduced risk of death from pneumonia/influenza or COPD. For the case-control studies, two groups of cases and control subjects were selected based on two outcomes: pneumonia/influenza and COPD. This research protocol was reviewed and ruled exempt under the Code of Federal Regulations protection of human subjects.29 The Lovelace Patient Database (LPD), a deidentified,
Matched Cohort Study
Table 1 lists the characteristics of the patients in the matched cohort. Among the 19,058 HMO members with a statin pharmacy fill, 11,583 patients (60.8%) received at least 4 mg/d during phase 2. Statin daily dose was lowest in members born after 1945 (p < 0.001). Statin users had a higher mean number of different medications received in phase 1. A higher fraction of moderate-daily-dose users (≥ 4 mg/d) had three or more influenza vaccinations in phase 2. Significantly more statin users (both
Discussion
This study found a dramatically reduced risk of death from COPD among statin users and a significantly reduced risk of death from influenza/pneumonia. Since the reductions were observed in both the cohort and case-control studies, it is unlikely they could be due to artifacts of either study design or the analysis.
These findings suggest that moderate-dose statin use reduces the risk of influenza/pneumonia death and strongly suggest that statins reduce the risk of COPD death. Both findings are
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Cited by (0)
This work was performed at Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute.
The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.