{"id":804139,"date":"2026-10-16T05:20:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T05:20:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/804139\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T05:20:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T05:20:17","slug":"bbc-expert-gives-major-statins-update-about-impact-on-health-condition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/804139\/","title":{"rendered":"BBC expert gives major statins update about impact on health condition"},"content":{"rendered":"

A massive research study has returned results and Dr Oscar Duke said: ‘really important to think about that’<\/p>\n

11:46, 15 Oct 2026Updated 13:00, 15 Oct 2026<\/p>\n

\"On<\/p>\n

On BBC Morning Live Dr Oscar Duke explained the results of a statins study(Image: BBC Morning Live)<\/p>\n

A BBC expert has given his verdict on a major research into statins and their impact on potentially serious health conditions. Statins are a class of prescription medications used to lower blood cholesterol levels and reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes.<\/p>\n

New research published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology suggests<\/a> that taking cholesterol-lowering statins is associated with a lower risk of developing open-angle glaucoma and a reduced need for intensive treatments or surgery.<\/p>\n

Appearing on BBC<\/a> Morning Live Dr Oscar Duke said: \u201cI always want to be hopeful as someone myself with not a lot of eyesight to lose left. Um, anything that can help would be fantastic. And glaucoma is one of those conditions that we don\u2019t have a cure for, but we do have great treatments for potentially. So, lots that can be done<\/a>. But what about statins? Well, we know statins are really good at lowering cholesterol, reducing our risk of heart attacks and strokes. But can they help us with glaucoma?\u201c<\/p>\n

Dr Duke said the results came from a huge study which looked at more than 200,000 <\/a>people: \u201cThis is a study that\u2019s been done in the US in California. And what they did was they followed people, 210,000 people, looked at their data, those who were on statins, and then compared with 210,000 people who weren\u2019t taking statins.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey found that if you were taking a statin over a five-year period, then there was a 15% reduction in your risk of glaucoma. Now there are quite a few caveats to this. So this is one of those studies that can show an association but not a definite cause as I often talk about. So really important to think about that. We don\u2019t know for certain that it\u2019s the statin causing that. Actually in the study when they looked over a longer time period over 10 years there was a slightly less reduction in the glaucoma in those people taking statins.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that there have actually been studies that show if you take statins for a long period of time then it might very slightly increase the risk of glaucoma.<\/p>\n

Dr Duke said: \u201dThe honest answer is it\u2019s interesting. We don\u2019t know exactly what this relationship is. It certainly doesn\u2019t mean that we\u2019ve got enough evidence at the moment to say take a statin and you won\u2019t get glaucoma or it will significantly reduce your risk. But the study did also show that those who had glaucoma and were taking statins were less likely to need strong treatments.<\/p>\n

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\u201cSo they talked in the film about first having some drops and perhaps having some laser treatments and you are less likely to need to go up to that level or even higher levels of having surgery treatments if you were taking statins. So I think what\u2019s going to happen is more research will be done. We\u2019ll do a formal study to really evaluate this over time and hopefully we\u2019ll find a link that we can use because statins are broadly a very safe treatment for most people.\u201d<\/p>\n

The researchers aid future randomised trials were needed to investigate the effects of statins on the development and treatment of glaucoma. Those taking statins also had a 60% lower risk of undergoing selective laser trabeculoplasty (SLT) and an 11% lower risk of requiring eye drops to reduce pressure in the eye. The lower risk remained after ten years.<\/p>\n

Statins are widely used to lower cholesterol, and previous research has suggested they could also prevent or slow down nerve cell death. However, other studies have linked long-term statin use with raised eye pressure and an increased risk of glaucoma.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A massive research study has returned results and Dr Oscar Duke said: ‘really important to think about that’…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":804140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[243,16591,59,102,2750,8083,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-804139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-bbc","tag-cholesterol","tag-gb","tag-health","tag-heart-disease","tag-prescriptions","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=804139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/804140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=804139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=804139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=804139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}