Safety of aggressive statin therapy.

New cholesterol guidelines will lead to use of statins more frequently and at higher doses. Myopathy, the most common and potentially most serious adverse effect, is dose-related. Rhabdomyolysis, which is rare, appears to occur at a similar rate with all currently marketed statins. Since it can occur without warning symptoms, patients who take high doses or are at high risk for other reasons should be monitored more closely. The possibility that statins could increase the incidence of some kinds of cancer in humans, as they do in animals, is not supported by most of the data available to date, but longer followup is needed.