Statins gave me muscle aches. What now?

Talk to your clinician before giving up. Most people who get aches can take a different statin, a lower dose, or a non-statin medicine.

In blinded trials, 27.1% of people on a statin reported muscle aches, and so did 26.6% on a sugar pill. So most aches on a statin aren't caused by it, though some are.

Options include switching statins, a lower dose, taking it a few days a week, adding ezetimibe, or moving to bempedoic acid or a PCSK9 medicine.

Source: CTT Collaboration, Lancet 2022; SAMSON trial, NEJM 2020.