Drug-drug interactions between vitamin K antagonists and statins: A
systematic review
Abstract
Abstract Concomitant use of Vitamin K antagonists (VKA) and statins is
frequent in cardiovascular patients. However, clinical guidelines on
this drug combination are divergent. Therefore, we performed a
systematic review according to the PRISMA guidelines to evaluate the
effect of statin initiation on coagulation among VKA users. Applying two
broad search strategies for the drug interaction between VKA and statins
in both Embase and Pubmed, 8,623 unique hits were obtained. In the final
sample eight studies were included. The most frequent used VKA in the
studies was warfarin while simvastatin was the most commonly initiated
statin. All included studies showed a minor increase in the
anticoagulant effect of VKA following statin initiation during VKA
treatment. The reported increases in mean INR ranged from 0.15-0.65. The
effect is likely to be of limited clinical relevance but should be
evaluated individually.