Clinical benefits of pitavastatin: focus on patients with diabetes or at risk of developing diabetes

Abstract

Despite attaining LDL-cholesterol targets, many patients with diabetes remain at risk of developing cardiovascular events. In addition, treatment with statins has been associated with a slight but significant increased risk of development of diabetes, particularly with high-intensity statins. Pitavastatin is a moderate- to high-intensity statin that effectively reduces LDL-cholesterol levels. Pitavastatin provides a sustained increase of HDL-cholesterol levels that may exhibit a neutral or positive effect on glucose metabolism, may not increase the risk of new-onset diabetes, may exhibit positive effects on renal function and urinary albumin excretion and the risk of drug-drug interactions is low. Therefore, it seems that pitavastatin should preferentially be considered in the treatment of dyslipidemia in diabetic patients or at risk of developing diabetes.

Keywords: HDL-cholesterol; diabetes; dyslipidemia; metabolic syndrome; pitavastatin.