7 Tesla MRI Study in Patients With Statin Related Muscle Complaints
Status:
Completed
Trial end date:
2021-06-23
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
Roughly 5-10% of statin-treated patients report muscle pain, aches, weakness, cramps,
stiffness, or "heaviness" - typically occurring symmetrically in the legs. For healthcare
providers, the major diagnostic challenge is to unambiguously link these symptoms to statin
use, especially since some patients can have normal serum creatine kinase (CK) levels despite
demonstrable weakness and muscle biopsy proven statin-induced myopathy .
No well accepted, standardized, or Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-endorsed diagnostic
method exists for statin-induced muscle injury. This lack of an objective diagnostic
methodology blocks vertical advancement of the field.
The successful completion of this project will develop in vivo techniques that will provide
insight into how statins affect muscle metabolism and help establish a methodology to
objectively diagnose muscle injury due to statins. The development of an MRS technique will
allow for in-vivo analyses and the data accumulated here will serve as preliminary data for
futher extramural funding of studies with much larger sample sizes. Ultimately, this focus of
research will lead to improved diagnosis and treatment of patients with statin-related muscle
complaints, which is central to obtaining the cardiovascular risk reduction from
lipid-lowering drugs.