Researchers from Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute and other institutions found that asthma patients who are started on statins experience fewer asthma-related emergency department visits and decreased oral corticosteroid use. The study will be published Nov. 1 in American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
The research was based on a large population-based cohort of subjects with asthma drawn from the data of five health plans, including Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. Statin users were matched with non-statin users using characteristics such as age, baseline asthma therapy, site of enrollment, season of enrollment and propensity score. Statin exposure and asthma exacerbations were assessed over a 24-month observation period. The results found significantly decreased odds of asthma-related ED visits and use of oral corticosteroids for statin users compared to non-statin users.
“This study used a large sample to test the effect of statins on asthma symptoms,” said senior author Ann Wu, MD, MPH, of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute at Harvard Medical School. “While other studies on statins and asthma have had mixed results, most were limited by small sample sizes and short treatment periods. These results may be encouraging for the more than 300 million people around the world with asthma, but additional randomized controlled trials are needed to confirm these findings.”