Statins and exercise

For the new study, which was published online in The Journal of the American College of Cardiology, researchers from the University of Missouri and other institutions gathered a group of overweight, sedentary men and women, all of whom had multiple symptoms of metabolic problems, including wide waistlines, high blood pressure or excess abdominal fat.

Most had slightly but not dangerously elevated cholesterol levels.

None had exercised regularly in the past year.

All underwent muscle biopsies and treadmill testing to determine their aerobic fitness — which was generally quite low — and agreed to continue with their normal diet.

Then they all began a supervised 12-week exercise program, during which they visited the university lab five times a week and walked or jogged on a treadmill for 45 minutes at a moderately vigorous pace (about 65 to 70 percent of their individual aerobic maximum).

Half of the group also began taking a daily 40-milligram dose of simvastatin, a particular type of statin sold under the brand name Zocor.

At the end of 12 weeks, the participants fitness and muscles were retested.

Statins, as most of us know, are medications designed to reduce the body’s cholesterol levels, particularly levels of low-density lipoprotein, or “bad” cholesterol. The drugs routinely are prescribed for those with high cholesterol and other risk factors for heart disease, and some physicians believe that they should be used prophylactically by virtually everyone over 50.

Exercise also typically is recommended as a means of fighting heart disease and prolonging life span.

And both statins and sweating indisputably are effective. In past studies, researchers have shown that statins reduce the risk of a heart attack in people at high risk by 10 to 20 percent for every 1-millimole-per-liter reduction in blood cholesterol levels (millimoles measure the actual number of cholesterol molecules in the bloodstream), equivalent to about a 40-point drop in LDL levels. Meanwhile, improving aerobic fitness by even a small percentage through exercise likewise has been found to lessen someone’s likelihood of dying prematurely by as much as 50 percent.

So, theoretically, it would seem that combining statins and exercise should provide the greatest possible health benefit.

But until the current study, no experiment scrupulously had explored the interactions of statin drugs and workouts in people. And the results, as it turns out, are worrisome.

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