The long list of side effects associated with statins is vastly overstated, according to the most rigorous assessment of the evidence to date. This is prompting calls for the drugs’ packaging to be updated, over concerns that warnings regarding these reported side effects are putting people off the life-saving medicines.

“We can now be confident that statins do not cause the vast majority of medical issues listed as potential side effects in statin patient information leaflets,” said at the University of Oxford at a press briefing on 3 February.

Statins, which lower cholesterol levels, are inexpensive drugs that significantly cut the risk of heart attacks and strokes. But there has long been concern surrounding their recorded side effects, namely muscle pain, despite a in 2022 showing that this isn’t commonly caused by statins.

“Unfortunately, ongoing confusion and concern – not just in patients, but also many doctors regarding potential statin side effects – mean that many people are not willing to start statins, or stop [taking] them,” said Reith.

Now, Reith and her colleagues have looked into the side effects that are commonly listed on statin labels, such as dizziness, fatigue, memory loss and headache, which normally end up there following evidence from case reports and observational studies. They didn’t investigate muscle pain or weakness, or whether there is an increased risk of diabetes, which was flagged as a small risk in a .

The researchers analysed 19 randomised controlled trials, involving 120,000 participants who were followed for 4.5 years, on average, looking into the effects of five of the most commonly prescribed statins relative to a placebo.

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Of the 66 side effects they analysed, they found that statins don’t seem to be the cause for 62 of them, with similar rates of incidence occurring in the placebo groups. They may arise due to the nocebo effect, where the expectation of harm leads to someone experiencing it, says at New York University Langone Health.

The researchers did find that statins legitimately raise the risk of a few side effects, such as excess protein levels in urine, limb swelling and changes in liver function, but not to the extent that they seem to cause harm. “This allows us to be confident in saying that the benefits of statins really do significantly outweigh their risks,” said Reith.

Drug regulators should now update statin labels, says at the University of California, Los Angeles. For instance, labels could make clear which side effects are actually caused by statins and which seem to occur at similar rates among people on a placebo, she says.

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But this is rarely a quick process – the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency only recommended that statin labels update descriptions of muscle weakness and pain as a side effect in January 2026, for instance.

In the meantime, clinicians can use the results to reassure people who are taking statins, or who could benefit from them. “It’s not about telling people that they’re crazy, that they’re wrong or you don’t have a side effect, it’s about educating them to change their expectations and help them,” says Berger.

Watson hopes the review will settle the debate around statin side effects. “The focus of future work should shift away from asking whether statins generally cause these symptoms – we already have this answer,” she says. Instead, it should focus on uncovering who might actually be susceptible to certain statin-related side effects – such as people with several health problems – and why, in real-world settings, she says.

Men over 50 may have to exercise more than twice as much as women to get the same heart health benefits. An analysis of activity tracker data found that men in this age group need nearly 9 hours per week of moderate to vigorous activity – like brisk walking or cycling – to gain a 30 per cent drop in coronary heart disease risk, compared with about 4 hours for women.

żěè¶ĚĘÓƵs already suspected that women got more cardiac benefits than men based on self-reported exercise data, but such figures aren’t always accurate.

To overcome that problem, at Xiamen University in China and his colleagues retrieved data from wrist-worn activity trackers collected by the UK Biobank study and compared that with participants’ health records over a period of about eight years.

First, the team analysed information from 80,243 adults, with an average age of 61, who had no personal history of coronary heart disease. Among women, those who did at least 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise per week saw a 22 per cent drop in their risk of developing coronary heart disease. For men, getting this amount of exercise was linked to just a 17 per cent drop.

Achieving a 30 per cent risk reduction required significantly more exercise – with a notable sex difference: 250 minutes for women, and 530 for men.

Then, the team looked at 5169 participants who had already been diagnosed with coronary heart disease. They had an average age of 67 and two-thirds of them were men. With 150 minutes of weekly moderate to vigorous exercise, women were 70 per cent less likely to die over the next roughly eight years – for any reason – than women who exercised less. By contrast, men who did 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise each week were only about 20 per cent less likely to die than their less active counterparts.

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“This isn’t bad news for men, it’s just something we should know about,” says at Monash University, Australia. “Once we know, we can do better – we can do more exercise. And while it’s reassuring for women who are busy all the time, I also think women should not miss the fact that they need to exercise as well.”

Chen and his colleagues weren’t available for comment, but in their paper, they suggest the discrepancy may be explained by hormones, as higher oestrogen levels might enhance fat burning during exercise. It could also be related to biological differences that could mean women use more respiratory, metabolic and muscular strength to achieve the same physical tasks as men, says Eynon.

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The study is “robust” and underscores the need for , says at Columbia University, New York City. A drawback, however, is that it is focused on a primarily well-off, well-educated population that was about 93 per cent white. Black women tend to have worse cardiovascular outcomes than white women, says DeFilippis, and social factors play a significant role in health and adherence to treatment plans.

“Understanding how these findings apply to a more racially diverse and socioeconomically disadvantaged population will be imperative in the future, given their higher burden of cardiovascular disease,” she says.

Even so, the findings in this older population suggest that even exercise later in life can have significant benefits – although activity should be tailored to people’s age and physical capacities, she adds. “It’s never too late to start moving and be more active.”

Covid-19 seems to accelerate the ageing of blood vessels, but perhaps only among women.

The infection has previously been , like heart disease, but how it has this effect isn’t entirely clear. To learn more, at the Université Paris Cité in France and her colleagues recruited 2390 people, aged 50 on average, from 16 countries – including the UK and US – between September 2020 and February 2022.

Some of them had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes covid-19, or had antibodies against it despite not being vaccinated, a sign that they had been infected. The others had only ever tested negative for the virus and had no signs of prior infection.

The health of their arteries was assessed by measuring how fast a pressure wave passed between the carotid artery in their neck and the femoral arteries in their legs. This is a measure of artery stiffness, which increases naturally with age, with less flexible arteries raising the risk of heart disease.

The researchers found that among the women in the study, a known SARS-CoV-2 infection was linked to stiffer arteries. This also seemed to increase alongside the severity of their infection. For instance, women who were hospitalised with covid-19 had a vascular age that was around five years older than their uninfected counterparts, rising to 7.5 years among those admitted to intensive care.

The researchers controlled for other factors that can influence artery stiffness, like smoking and obesity.

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But none of these effects occurred among the men. Previous research suggests that and are , which could lead to damaging inflammation. Bruno says she was expecting to see some difference between the sexes, but not this much.

The findings could also shed some light on long covid, which . At a six-month follow-up, the stiffness of the women’s arteries had improved slightly, but was still particularly high among those with lingering covid-19-related complications. “Here we have demonstrated there is something measurable in the blood vessels that corresponds to the symptoms of long-covid patients,” says Bruno.

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It’s possible that some of the people in the uninfected group may have unknowingly had a mild infection, affecting the validity of the results.

Nevertheless, at the University of East Anglia in the UK says the study is robust and could help identify people with long covid. “The study is the first large international multicentre investigation to demonstrate that covid-19 is associated with accelerated vascular ageing,” he says. “The findings may also contribute to a better mechanistic understanding of post covid-19 syndrome, potentially paving the way for targeted pharmacological interventions.”