Cholesterol Drug Can Harm Your Kidneys

If you take a kind of drug known as a fibrate to control your cholesterol or triglycerides (blood fats), make sure your doctor tests your kidneys. A study of these drugs, (brand names Lopid, Tricor and Trilipix), shows they frequently cause kidney damage, especially in older people.

Recent evidence from clinical trials and case reports suggests fibrates can cause an increase in serum creatinine, an indicator of kidney health measured by a blood test, which indicates a loss of kidney health. Scientists at the Lawson Health Research Institute and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES), found that at least one in 10 fibrate users over the age of 65 experienced a 50 percent increase in their serum creatinine.

“When a physician decides to start a fibrate in a new patient, especially an older patient, given the information we have today they should start the patient on a dose that’s appropriate, closely monitor their kidney function, and, if the kidney function goes off, either lower the dose or discontinue the drug,” says researcher Amit Garg, M.D.

Meanwhile, other scientists doubt that fibrates do much good.  The drugs often are prescribed to diabetes patients as an add-on to statins, drugs that lower LDL cholesterol.  Annual sales in the U.S. for the three fibrates now approved by the Food and Drug Administration — gemfibrozil (Lopid), fenofibrate (Tricor) and fenofibric acid (Trilipix) — amount to billions of dollars.

“There have been few studies regarding the clinical outcome efficacy of fibrates,” says Sanjay Kaul, M.D., director of the Cardiology Fellowship Training Program at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles.  “Thousands and thousands of Americans take fibrates every day but, so far, there are no long-term studies showing that fibrates lower cardiovascular risk or improve survival among diabetes patients who are also on statins.”