Taking Statins for High Cholesterol Helps Prevent COVID-19—a Little
Are you one of the millions of people who take daily doses of a statin drug to lower cholesterol? If so you appear to have a small edge in the battle against COVID-19.
A study recently published in PLOS Medicine looked at 963,876 people in Sweden. Over the study period some died of COVID-19 and some didn't.
Because Sweden has socialized medicine, the researchers were able to determine whether or not people in the study were using statins to lower cholesterol. They and compared each group in terms of COVID-19 mortality.
The results indicate that that there is a statistically significant (i.e. non-random) effect. "Statin treatment was associated with a moderately lower risk of COVID-19 mortality," the authors concluded.
They stress that this was an observational study and not an experiment, meaning it shows an association but doesn't demonstrate cause. That's a standard caveat (limitation) for a study like this, but it's hard to imagine how the cause could go in the other direction—i.e. how getting COVID-19 could cause you not to take statins.
So no magic bullet here, but statins moderately lower risk. Hey, every little bit helps.
