BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES:

Few data exist about the relationship between rosuvastatin use and acute pancreatitis. We tested a plausible hypothesis that rosuvastatin use might be associated with acute pancreatitis in Taiwan.

METHODS:

We designed a case-control study using a randomly sampled database of the Taiwan National Health Insurance Program. We identified 5728 subjects with the first episode of acute pancreatitis in 1998-2011 as the case group and we randomly selected 22,912 sex- and age-matched subjects without acute pancreatitis as the control group. Subjects who never received a rosuvastatin prescription were defined as never use of rosuvastatin. Subjects who at least received 1 prescription for rosuvastatin within 7 days before the date of diagnosing acute pancreatitis were defined as active use of rosuvastatin. Subjects who did not receive a prescription within 7 days but at least received 1 prescription for rosuvastatin ≥ 8 days before the date of diagnosing acute pancreatitis were defined as non-active use of rosuvastatin. Those at least receiving 1 prescription for other statins or non-statin lipid-lowering drugs were excluded from this study. We estimated the odds ratio with 95% confidence interval for acute pancreatitis associated with rosuvastatin use by using the multivariable unconditional logistic regression model.

RESULTS:

The multivariable analysis disclosed that the adjusted odds ratio for acute pancreatitis in subjects with active use of rosuvastatin was 3.21 (95% confidence interval 1.70, 6.06). The adjusted odds ratio was 0.90 in subjects with non-active use of rosuvastatin (95% confidence interval 0.67, 1.19), without statistical significance.

CONCLUSIONS:

We observed active use of rosuvastatin to be associated with increased risk for acute pancreatitis.