Serum Proinflammatory Chemokines in Healthy Elderly Taking or not Taking Simvastatin -Data from the Brisighella Heart Study

Background. Recent preclinical evidence and data from adult subjects suggests that statins could improve the proinflammatory profile of hypercholesterolemic subjects. Objectives. We aim to compare the serum levels of a set of proinflammatory chemokines in elderly statistical twins taking or not taking statins. Material and Methods. Among the historical cohort of the Brisighella Heart Study, we chose 40 healthy elderly subjects continuously treated with statins for at least 1 year and 40 cross-matched subjects not treated with statins (M : F = 1 : 1) characterized by similar age, body mass index (BMI), leisure-time and working activity, smoking habits, history of cardiovascular disease, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, fasting plasma glucose, plasma lipids, uric acid, and creatinine. Results. The proinflammatory chemokine serum level is similar in statin untreated and treated statistical twins. The OR to have a serum level of monocyte chemoattractant protein (MCP-1) lower than the 50th percentile of the distributionin statin-treated subjects compared to the statin untreated subjects is 0.669 (95% CI 0.193; 2.327), the ORfor interleukin-8 (IL-8) = 0.818 (95% CI 0.236; 2.835), the OR for γ-interferon inducible protein-10 (IP-10) = 1.361(95% CI 0.358; 5.175), and for interleukin-18 (IL-18) = 0.545 (95% CI 0.155; 1.914). Conclusions. In relatively healthy, elderly subjects selected from a randomized general population sample, we did not observe differences in the serum levels of the selected set of proinflammatory chemokines in statin treated and untreated subjects with similar LDL-C level, suggesting that cholesterol reduction per se could be a main determinantof statin anti-inflammatory effects