• Short comment about stains and vitamin by Dr who wrote book about Statin Problems
• Dr. Eades on Statins increase vitamin D in blood in 2007
• Do Statin Drugs Cause Vitamin D Deficiency? - Jan 2010
• 1% to 5% of statin users get muscle pain - perhaps associated with depletion of vitamin D

See also VitaminDWiki

• Statins with low vitamin D increased chance of musculoskeletal pain by 2X – Jan 2015 < 15 ng
• Theories on the interaction between statins and vitamin D – 2012
• Rosuvastatin given for renal problem resulted in increased vitamin D levels – RCT Dec 2012
• Statin pain associated with 10 ng less vitamin D – meta-analysis Oct 2014
• Off topic: US and NZ permit drug advertising on TV, none permit tobacco advertising
• The statin Crestor dramatically increases levels of vitamin D in the blood – Jan 2012
• One statin decreased vitamin D levels but the other did not – March 2010
• Statin-induced Myalgias corrected with 100,000 weekly Vitamin D
• Statins associated with 14X increase in Polymyalgia Rheumatica (a new disease) – Aug 2012
• Click here to download 1 page PDF Sept 2009
• Not all statins increase vitamin D levels – Dec 2010
• Cholesterol and vitamin D
• Statin pain eliminated by taking 50,000 IU vitamin D weekly – July 2011
• Statin use increased probability of diabetes by 48 percent – perhaps via vitamin D Jan 2012
  approximately 1 in every 4 adult Americans over 45 currently using statins to "prevent heart disease."
• Overview Cardiovascular and Vitamin D
• Breast cancer 2X more likely if have taken statins for 10 years – July 2013

Statin intolerance reduced as level of vitamin D is raised - July 2015

about 53% no longer statin intolerant if > 30ng of vitamin D
about 90% no longer statin intolerant if 54 ng of vitamin D
 Download a letter to the editor from VitaminDWiki

Statins and Vitamin D in PubMed 159 items April 2014: examples follow:

• Low plasma vitamin D levels and muscle-related adverse effects in statin users.Jan 2014 full free text
• The association between drugs frequently used by the elderly and vitamin D blood levels: a review of observational and experimental studies.Feb 2014
• Vitamin D3 effects on lipids differ in statin and non-statin-treated humans: superiority of free 25-OH D levels in detecting relationships Sept 2013
• Effect of simvastatin/ezetimibe 10/10 mg versus simvastatin 40 mg on serum vitamin D levels. May 2013
• Cardiovascular disease, statins and vitamin D. Feb 2012
• Possible mechanisms of interaction between statins and vitamin D May 2012
• Cholesterol levels, statins, vitamin D, and associated risk of pneumonia May 2012
• Statins, vitamin D, and severe sepsis - Aug 2011
• Vitamin D deficiency, myositis-myalgia, and reversible statin intolerance. - July 2011
• Resolution of statin-induced myalgias by correcting vitamin D deficiency - May 2011
• The relationship of vitamin D deficiency to statin myopathy - March 2011

Do statins increase the level of vitamin D in the blood in the short term?

Question: Is this a direct effect, or is it due to statins reducing cholesterol, which is needed to produce vitamin D from the skin, but cholesterol is not needed if the vitamin D is taken as a supplement

Some people appear to think that vitamin D could serve the same function as statins at much lower cost and much lower risk

Note: one statin is the top selling US prescription drug - with more sales than the next two top-selling drugs

See also Web

• New York Times Article March 2012
  About 1 in 200 on statins get diabetes
  about 4 in 200 on statins do not get heart attack (if not had one before)
  with 200 million taking statins in the US this amounts to 200,000 more people getting diabetes
• FDA warning Feb 2012 Statins associated with"
  Diabetes, *Muscle loss, *Memory loss
• Vascular Calcification Is Increased With Statin Use (VADT)
• Consumer Alert: 300+ Health Problems Linked To Statin Drugs Green Medical Information April 2012
• Do YOU Take Any of These 11 Dangerous Cholesterol Drugs? Mercola Aug 2012
  over 900 studies proving adverse effects of statins
  Odds are greater than 100 to 1 that if you're taking a statin, you don't really need it.
  If You Take Statins, You MUST Take CoQ10
  appropriate sun exposure normalizes your cholesterol levels and prevents heart disease
• Enhancement of vitamin D levels by statins Endocine conference June 2013
  Patients who were taking statins were significantly more likely to have vitamin D levels at or above 30ng/ml (X2=5.5, p=0.02) than patients not on a statin
• Low vitamin D levels associated with statin induced muscle pain Vitamin D Council] March 2013
  PLOS ONE free full text study; 21% more likely if low vitamin D
• Cholesterol drug users may use pills as a license to overeat April 2014
  US statin users were eating about the same number of calories as non-users by 2009-2010.
• Statins: proven and associated harms May 2014 details, with RCT references
• Vitamin D status modifies the association between statin use and musculoskeletal pain: a population based study Jan 2015
  2X more likely to have pain with statin if vitamin D <15 ng
• A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of 7 Studies with 2416 Patients 2014
  statin-induced myalgia associated with -9.4 ng less vitamin D (7 studies, 2400 people - see table below

See also Vitamin D Council behind a paywall

• Statins and heart health: Is vitamin D the missing link? April 2013 -
• Did you know: Statins raise vitamin D levels
  . .market for statins nearly tripled when the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) revised its guidelines to recommend statins as primary prevention.
  Lancet had an article about the recommendation: Are lipid-lowering guidelines evidence-based?” Lancet 369 (9557)
  8 of the 9 doctors on the NCEP panel were discovered to have been paid by statin manufacturers
  7 out of 8 studies later found that Statins raised levels of vitamin D
• 30% fewer headaches if take statins Jan 2015

VitaminDWiki expects that Vitamin K2 could decrease the above side effects of statins

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Rosuvastatin is a statin which increased vitamin D levels by 2.8X – Aug 2010

The JUPITER lipid lowering trial and vitamin D, Is there a connection?
William R Ware
Faculty of Science (Emeritus); University of Western Ontario; London, ON CA
Corresponding author. Correspondence to: William R. Ware; Email: warewr at rogers.com
Received May 6, 2010; Accepted August 3, 2010.
Dermatoendocrinol. 2010 Apr-Dec; 2(2): 50–54. doi: 10.4161/derm.2.2.13235

There is growing evidence that vitamin D deficiency significantly increases the risk of adverse cardiovascular events and that a vitamin D status representing sufficiency or optimum is protective. Unfortunately, in clinical trials that address interventions for reducing risk of adverse cardiovascular events, vitamin D status is not generally measured. Failure to do this has now assumed greater importance with the report of a study that found rosuvastatin at doses at the level used in a recent large randomized lipid lowering trial (JUPITER) had a large and significant impact on vitamin D levels as measured by the metabolite 25-hydroxyvitamin D. The statin alone appears to have increased this marker such that the participants on average went from deficient to sufficient in two months. The difference in cardiovascular risk between those deficient and sufficient in vitamin D in observational studies was similar to the risk reduction found in JUPITER.

Thus it appears that this pleiotropic effect of rosuvastatin may be responsible for part of its unusual effectiveness in reducing the risk of various cardiovascular endpoints found in JUPITER and calls into question the interpretation based only on LDL cholesterol and CRP changes. In addition, vitamin D status is a cardiovascular risk factor which up until now has not been considered in adjusting study results or in multivariate analysis, and even statistical analysis using only baseline values may be inadequate.

PMCID: PMC3081676
Text from the PDF
Rosuvastatin was given in doses of 10–20 mg/day and mean LDL levels decreased from 174 to 100 mg/dL.
At baseline the group had a mean level of 25(OH)D of 14 ng/mL which after 8 weeks of treatment increased to 36.3 ng/mL

PDF is attached at the bottom of this page

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Benefits of Chocolate on the heart and all cause mortality (vs statins)

Green Med Info April 2012
Great many health benefits of chocolate documented -
Regarding just the heart: Chocolate appears to be better than statins.

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Hypothesis of how statins can increase vitamin D blood levels, yet cause problems associated with vitamin D deficiency

Statins could decrease either the production or use of active vitamin D, that is, the form which is actually used in the body.
- suggested by Judy, Aug 2012

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Simvastatin/Ezetimibe 10/10 mg increased Vitamin D levels 37%

Effect of Simvastatin/Ezetimibe 10/10 mg Versus Simvastatin 40 mg on Serum Vitamin D Levels.
J Cardiovasc Pharmacol Ther. 2013 Jan 2.
Liberopoulos EN, Makariou SE, Moutzouri E, Kostapanos MS, Challa A, Elisaf M.
Department of Internal Medicine, Medical School, University of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece.

Backround:Low levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)VitD) have been recognized as an emerging cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factor. Statins are reported to increase 25(OH)VitD concentration. Animal studies suggest that ezetimibe is a moderate inhibitor of intestinal 25(OH)VitD absorption, but its effect in humans is unknown.Aim:To investigate whether combined treatment with simvastatin/ezetimibe 10/10 mg would increase 25(OH)VitD levels compared to simvastatin 40 mg monotherapy in patients with primary hypercholesterolemia.

METHODS:
In a Prospective Randomized Open-label Blinded End point study, 50 patients with primary hypercholesterolemia received either simvastatin/ezetimibe 10/10 mg (n = 25) or simvastatin 40 mg (n = 25) daily for 3 months. The primary end point was between-group difference in the change of serum 25(OH)VitD levels.

RESULTS:
Simvastatin/ezetimibe 10/10 mg was associated with a 36.7% increase in 25(OH)VitD serum levels (from 6.8 to 9.3 ng/mL, P = .000), while simvastatin 40 mg was associated with a 79.1% increase (from 6.7 to 12.0 ng/mL, P = .008). The increase in 25(OH)VitD levels in the simvastatin 40 mg group was significantly greater compared to that in the simvastatin/ezetimibe 10/10 mg group (P = .04). Both groups exhibited similar reductions in low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels.

CONCLUSION:
For similar LDL-C lowering simvastatin 40 mg is associated with greater increase in 25(OH)VitD compared to simvastatin/ezetimibe 10/10 mg.
Whether this difference is relevant in terms of CVD risk reduction is unknown.

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A New Women’s Issue: Statins NYT May 2014

• If you’re going to tell a healthy person to take a medicine every day for the rest of their life, you should have really good data that it’s going to make them better off,
• statins didn’t prevent healthy women from having their first heart attacks and didn’t save lives.
• Women who are healthy derive no benefit from statins, and even those women who have established heart disease derive only half the benefit men do.
• The drugs have long been known to cause muscle pain in some people and, more rarely, liver and kidney damage, as well as cognitive side effects like memory loss and confusion
• postmenopausal women who took part in the Women’s Health Initiative were much more likely to develop diabetes if they took statins, and diabetes itself increases the risk of heart disease considerably.
  
  Summary by VitaminDWiki: No proof that statins helps healthy women, but there is proof that statins harms them

Statin Health problems - GreenMedInfo - Feb 2015 (nothing about vitamin D)

• Cracking the Cholesterol Myth: How Statins Harm The Body and Mind
  A new study finds the chemical war against cholesterol using statin drugs was justified through statistical deception and the cover up of over 300 adverse health effects documented in the biomedical literature

Muscle damage 80 studies	Nerve damage 54 studies	+Liver damage 32 studies
Endocrine disruption: 16 studies	Cancer-promoting: 9 studies	Diabetes-promoting: 8 studies
Cardiovascular-damaging: 15 studies	Birth defect causing 11 studies

• The JUPITER trial of Crestor vs placebo resulted in increased fatal heart attacks in the treatment group which were obscured by combing fatal and nonfatal infarctions.
• The HPS study has 26% drop out rate prior to the beginning of the trial, so that those with significant side effects were functionally excluded from the study.
• In at least four trials, statistically significant increases in cancer incidence was found, and handily dismissed by all authors as insignificant because they claimed "no known potential biological basis" is known.
• A low serum cholesterol level has also been found to serve as a biological marker of major depression and suicidal behavior,
     suicidal ideation among adults with mood disorders was more than 2.5-times greater in those taking statins
• "So, the next time you hear of a doctor recommending a cholesterol-lowering intervention, tell him you'll take that 1% risk and spare yourself cancer, cognitive dysfunction, myopathy, and diabetes"

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If you really must take statins and they cause pain, vitamin D will relieve the pain

Statin Intolerance Because of Myalgia, Myositis, Myopathy, or Myonecrosis Can in Most Cases be Safely Resolved by Vitamin D Supplementation March 2015
50,000 or 100,000 IU of vitamin D2 per week relieved statin pain
 Download the PDF from VitaminDWiki

• ConsumerLabs has a nice summary of this as well as many other vitamin D studies behind a subscription paywall
  Thier paywall is very much worth the price. They review a huge number of supplements
  I have subscribed for over a decade

80% of the people who should take statins have decided not to (TOO many side effects?) - May 2015

• Eight in 10 Primary-Prevention Patients Skip Statins, Dutch Study Finds Medscape
  70,000 participants in the LifeLines cohort study
  Conclusion of the report - doctors need to insist that the patients actually take the statins