【Abstract】A series of large-scale clinical trials have shown that statin therapy has definite clinical benefit in patients with cardiovascular diseases. However, some recent clinical researches indicate that statins increase the risk of developing diabetes mellitus. Therefore, the relationship between diabetes mellitus and statin has raise concerns. Some clinical evidence shows although the patients receiving statins have higher risk of diabetes mellitus, they also gain significant benefit from statin therapy by decreasing cardiovascular events, and the harms of new-onset diabetes are outweighed by reductions in cardiovascular benefit. As the risk of increasing new-onset diabetes is higher in the elderly than in the young, it is needed to monitor blood glucose for the elderly, especially for those using high-dose statins. At present, there is no evidence demonstrating that the development of statin-associated diabetes will result in increased risk of major cardiovascular events.
