February 5, 2026

New results on statins and side effects

Cardiovascular disease results in around 20 million deaths worldwide and causes around a quarter of all deaths in the UK. Statins are highly effective drugs that lower LDL (“bad”) cholesterol levels and have been repeatedly proven to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. However, there have been concerns about possible side effects.

Researchers from Oxford Population Health gathered together data from 23 large scale randomised studies from the Cholesterol Treatment Trialists’ Collaboration to undertake the most comprehensive review of possible side effects; these include memory loss, depression, sleep disturbance, and erectile and sexual dysfunction.

The results were published in The Lancet on Thursday 5 February at 23:30 GMT.

Speakers included:

Christina Reith, Associate Professor at Oxford Population Health and lead author of the study

Professor Sir Rory Collins, Emeritus Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Oxford Population Health and senior author of the paper

Professor Bryan Williams, Chief Scientific and Medical Officer at the British Heart Foundation