the.com/statin
A pill that bets your liver can out-argue a cheeseburger, and usually wins.
means A class of drugs that lowers cholesterol by blocking a liver enzyme the body uses to manufacture it.
from Coined by abbreviating 'cholesterol-lowering' chemical names ending in '-statin' — itself from Greek 'statikos,' meaning 'causing to stand, stopping.' The suffix shows up across pharmacology wherever a drug's job is to halt a process; here it halts HMG-CoA reductase, the liver enzyme that builds cholesterol, mid-assembly line.
- mechanism
- Blocks an enzyme your liver uses to make cholesterol
- origin
- First discovered in a fungus, like penicillin's cousin
- side effect
- Muscle aches are common, memory loss claims mostly debunked
- scale
- Taken daily by roughly 200 million people worldwide