A Scoping Review on the Reported Evidence and Gaps of the Risk of Diabetes in Dyslipidemic Patients under Statin Therapy

Abstract

With the increasing global burden of dyslipidemia over the past 30 years, it is estimated that more than 200 million people worldwide are under statin therapy. In India, roughly 25–30% of urban populations and 15–20% of rural populations have abnormal lipid levels. Statin, which is deemed to be the gold standard lipid-lowering agent, is the first treatment of choice for these patients. Although statins at one end are highly effective against dyslipidemiaand cardiovascular diseases, at the other end, they cause adverse effects including an increased risk of diabetes mellitus. The objective of this study was to understand the coexistence of diabetes and dyslipidemia in patients undergoing statin therapy. A scoping review was conducted with published articles selected from PubMed and Google Scholar. The obtained results were filtered based on inclusion/exclusion criteria. Our database search provided a total of 822 articles, of which 48 were selected for this review, with results concluding that statin users are potentially at a greater risk of developing diabetes mellitus compared with patients who are not using statins. Although many studies have been conducted to ascertain the onset of diabetes mellitus amongst statin users, the exact mechanism is not yet precisely established. Future studies are essential for identifying the exact cause of diabetes mellitus in statin users.

Keywords

• statins
• diabetes mellitus
• dyslipidemia
• insulin resistance
• new-onset diabetes mellitus