By Jim Bailey
Anchor / Managing Editor / WJHL
Published: October 29, 2009

Statins, those cholesterol-lowering drugs like Crestor and Lipitor, may also significantly improve your chances of surviving the flu bug.  A study presented at a conference on infectious diseases concluded that patients taking statins were almost 50% less likely to die from the flu.

A team of researchers, which included the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, studied 2800 people hospitalized with seasonal flu two winters ago.  More than 800 of the patients were taking statins, and continued to do so while hospitalized for the flu.  17 of them died, compared with 64 of a similar size group who were not taking statins.

Meredith Vandermeer of the Oregon Public Heath Division helped lead the study.  Reuters reports that she told the conference, “This research suggests there may be a role for statins in influenza treatment.”

That would be good news, since drugs now in use to treat flu generally must be administered early to successfully fight off a disease that kills roughly 36,000 Americans each year.

It would also be another feather in the cap of the statins, which beyond their primary role as cholesterol fighters have been shown to have other benefits; from lowering the risk of coronary disease, stroke, dementia, and breast cancer to increasing bone density.

There are critics of the drugs, and some of the claims require more research, but in a year when the H1N1 strain of flu is likely to increase the number of flu related deaths, we’ll take any help we can get.