Statins, the widely used cholesterol-lowering drugs, may do more than just protect the heart.
A large new study suggests that they could significantly reduce the risk of death in patients with life-threatening sepsis—a severe reaction to infection that causes the body to attack its own organs.
Sepsis is a medical emergency.
It occurs when the body’s immune system goes into overdrive in response to an infection, triggering widespread inflammation that can cause the heart, kidneys, and other organs to shut down.
Every year in the United States alone, around 750,000 people are hospitalized for sepsis, and nearly 27% of them don’t survive.
When sepsis progresses to septic shock, where blood pressure drops dangerously low, the risk of death rises even higher—to between 30% and 40%.
Now, researchers from Tianjin Medical University in China have found that statins may offer a new way to improve outcomes.
Their study, published in Frontiers in Immunology, analyzed data from over 12,000 critically ill sepsis patients and found that those who received statins had a 39% lower risk of dying within 28 days compared to those who did not receive the drugs.
Dr. Caifeng Li, the study’s lead researcher, explained that while statins are best known for lowering “bad” LDL cholesterol and protecting against heart attacks and strokes, they also have powerful anti-inflammatory and immune-regulating effects.
These extra benefits may help calm the dangerous immune response in sepsis and improve survival.
To conduct the study, the team used a massive medical database from a hospital in Boston, which contained anonymized health records for intensive care patients treated between 2008 and 2019.
They compared outcomes between two matched groups of sepsis patients—6,070 who were given statins during their hospital stay and 6,070 who were not.
Both groups also received standard treatments like antibiotics, fluids, and medications to support blood pressure.
By using a method called “propensity score matching,” the researchers tried to ensure the two groups were as similar as possible in terms of age, medical history, and severity of illness. This helped reduce the risk that other factors, rather than statins, were responsible for the results.
They found that 28-day mortality was significantly lower in the statin group—just over 14%—compared to more than 23% in those not receiving statins. However, people in the statin group spent slightly longer on machines like ventilators and dialysis, possibly because they lived longer and needed more extended care.
Interestingly, the benefits of statins held true across different body weight ranges—normal, overweight, and obese patients all saw reduced death rates. But the effect was not seen in underweight patients, and researchers say more study is needed in that group.
Previous clinical trials haven’t shown the same benefit, but Dr. Li believes those studies may have been too small or poorly designed to detect a real effect. She and her team now call for a large, carefully planned trial to confirm whether statins can be a reliable and safe add-on treatment for sepsis.
For now, the findings are promising. A common and inexpensive drug that’s already widely prescribed might also offer hope for one of the deadliest conditions in modern medicine.
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