RESEARCH ARTICLE
Patient with Hypertriglyceridemia, Type 2 Diabetes, and Chronic Kidney Disease Treated with Atorvastatin and Omega-3 Fatty Acid Ethyl Esters
Vasilios G Athyros1, * , Dimitri P Mikhailidis2
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2012Volume: 6
First Page: 122
Last Page: 125
Publisher ID: TOCMJ-6-122
DOI: 10.2174/1874192401206010122
Article History:
Received Date: 28/8/2012Acceptance Date: 13/9/2012
Electronic publication date: 20/9/2012
Collection year: 2012
open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
This is a case report that describes a 67-year-old woman with mixed hyperlipidemia and diabetic nephropathy. She was initially prescribed a combination of simvastatin plus gemfibrozil by her general practitioner (GP). When referred to our cardiovascular unit, we further diagnosed the patient to have mixed hyperlipidemia and rhabdomyolysis. Because of concerns with her chronic kidney disease (CKD), we temporarily stopped all her drug treatments and started insulin treatment for her type 2 diabetes (T2D). A month later when her T2D was stabilised, we prescribed atorvastatin and an omega-3 fatty acid ethyl ester supplement to treat her hypertriglyceridemia. Within two months her blood lipids were within the recommended range. In patients with stage 3–5 CKD, it is not advisable to prescribe the fibrate gemfibrozil, particularly in combination with a statin that is metabolised predominantly in the kidneys. To minimise adverse events without compromise on efficacy, we used a combination of omega-3 fatty acid ethyl esters, which are not metabolised in the kidneys, with a statin that is minimally metabolised in the kidneys for the treatment of her hyperlipidemia.
