Endothelial Vasodilation Effects of Statins in Type 2 Diabetic Patients

In this issue of Diabetes Care , there is an intriguing report of a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized study demonstrating that lipid-lowering treatment for 3 weeks with the powerful hydroxymethylglutaryl (HMG)-CoA reductase inhibitor (statin) atorvastatin did not reverse endothelium-dependent and -independent vascular dysfunction in 133 patients with type 2 diabetes (mean disease duration 11.5 years) and dyslipidemia (1). This observation is in stark contrast to results in nondiabetic dyslipidemic patients and insulin-resistant nondiabetic subjects in which HMG-CoA reductase therapy improved endothelium-dependent vascular relaxation (2–5). However, the study by van Venrooij et al. (1) is in agreement with a prior smaller study that observed no improvement in endothelial-derived vasodilation after statin treatment of established type 2 diabetic …