Cholesterol-lowering statin drugs do not help severely ill diabetics, and may even raise their risk of a deadly stroke, a study found. In the study, patients on Lipitor were twice as likely to die of a stroke. It was the first major test of statins in diabetics who need dialysis machines to remove wastes from their bloodstream because their kidneys cannot do the job. The results are surprising because previous research showed Lipitor helped less severely ill diabetics.Dr. Robert Stanton, who is chief of kidney diseases at Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston and was not involved in the study, said it may be too late to start diabetics on statins once their kidneys have failed.The study was funded by Lipitor’s maker, Pfizer Inc., and involved 1,255 Europeans with Type 2 diabetes, in which the body cannot properly use insulin. The findings were reported in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine.
