The association between statins exposure and peripheral neuropathy risk: A meta-analysis

What is known and objective: Statins are widely used lipid-lowering drugs and play an important role in the treatment of many cardiovascular diseases. With the increase in the scope of use and the number of users, peripheral neuropathy caused by statins has been frequently reported. There are no randomized controlled trials comparing the relationship between statins and the risk of peripheral neuropathy. Therefore, we systematically reviewed and meta-analysed observational studies evaluating the impact of statins on the risk of peripheral neuropathy.

Methods: PubMed, Embase, the Cochrane Library databases and Web of Science were used to search the effects of statins on polyneuropathy from inception to 3 December 2020. We included studies that met the following criteria: (i) A randomized controlled trial, prospective or retrospective cohort study examining the relationship between statins and peripheral neuropathy (PN). Exclusion criteria included the following: Reviews and research related to other diseases or subjects; and studies without data on the prevalence of PN were excluded. Newcastle-Ottawa scale (NOS) was used for quality assessment of included studies. Meta-analysis was used to estimate the risk of disease. We conducted a subgroup analysis of duration of follow-up, adjusted (adjusted RR vs. unadjusted RR), sample size, study design and region.

Results and discussion: A total of 9 independent studies assessing 150 556 patients were included in this analysis. In this meta-analysis, we found that there was a nonsignificant increase of PN with statins exposure (RR 1.26, 95% CI (0.92-1.74)). Our results revealed that there was no significant association between statins exposure and peripheral neuropathy risk.

What is new and conclusion: Statins exposure does not influence the risk of developing peripheral neuropathy. The quality of the evidence included in this study is low, but it can provide useful information for clinicians.