Statins and grapefruit skin#

Statins and grapefruit skin#

You won't need any further liver enzyme tests unless you begin to have symptoms of trouble with your liver.Ĭontact your health care professional immediately if you have unusual fatigue or weakness, loss of appetite, pain in your upper stomach, dark-colored urine, or yellowing of your skin or eyes. Rarely, if the increase is severe, you may need to try a different statin.Īlthough liver problems are rare, your health care team may order a liver enzyme test before or shortly after you begin to take a statin. If the increase is only mild, you can continue to take the drug. Occasionally, statin use could cause an increase in the level of enzymes in the liver. Rhabdomyolysis can occur when you take statins in combination with certain drugs or if you take a high dose of statins. Only a few cases of rhabdomyolysis occur per million people taking statins. The risk of very serious side effects is extremely low. Rhabdomyolysis can cause extreme muscle pain, liver damage, kidney failure and death. Very rarely, statins can cause life-threatening muscle damage called rhabdomyolysis (rab-doe-my-OL-ih-sis). However, studies have found that nearly 30% of people stopped taking the pills because of muscle aches even when they were taking a placebo.Ī strong predictor of if you'll experience muscle aches when taking statins could be whether or not you read about the potential side effect.

The real risk of developing muscle pain as a result of taking statins is about 5% or less compared with taking a pill that doesn't contain medicine, called a placebo.

A 'nocebo' effect means people who have negative expectations about a medicine report experiencing the potential side effect at higher rates than the drug should cause. However, researchers have found a 'nocebo' effect when it comes to people thinking they have muscle pain from statins.