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Effect of statins on hospitalization risk of bacterial infections in patients with or without diabetes

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Abstract

Aims

To investigate whether statins reduce the risk to first hospitalization of bacterial infections, in patients with or without diabetes taking into account prior or incident comorbidities.

Methods

By using administrative databases, the effect of current statin use was measured on the risk of first hospitalizations due to bacterial infections in people living in Tuscany, Italy, in the period January 1, 2011–December 31, 2015, after excluding those with previous statins use. Population was stratified as with (n = 128,207) or without diabetes (n = 3,304,906), and the hospitalization risk was analyzed by a Cox proportional hazards regression analysis after adjusting for age, gender, previous comorbidities, chronic renal failure, and prior or incident cardiovascular diseases.

Results

During the 5-year follow-up, 31,543 hospitalizations for bacterial infections were observed: 2.08(2.06–2.10) per 1000 person-year in non-diabetic and 5679: 9.13(8.94–9.32) per 1000 person-year in diabetic population. Diabetes conferred a greater risk of hospitalizations, independently from confounders [adjusted HR (95% CI) 2.04 (1.97–2.10); P < 0.0001]. Statin use decreased the risk by about 2.5% for each one month of therapy, at the same extent in subjects with or without diabetes, after adjusting for all covariates.

Conclusions

In this population, diabetes was associated by a twofold increase in the 5-year risk of hospitalizations for bacterial infections. Statin use decreased this risk to a same extent in subjects without or with diabetes, after adjusting for main confounders including comorbidities, and previous or incident cardiovascular events.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Epidemiology Unit, Agenzia Regionale Sanità Toscana, Via Pietro Dazzi 1, 50141, Florence, Italy

    Laura Policardo, Giuseppe Seghieri & Paolo Francesconi

  2. Diabetes Unit, Ospedale S. Jacopo, Pistoia, Italy

    Roberto Anichini

Authors
  1. Laura Policardo
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  2. Giuseppe Seghieri
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  3. Roberto Anichini
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  4. Paolo Francesconi
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Contributions

No potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article were reported. L.P. researched/analyzed data and wrote part of the manuscript. She is, moreover, the guarantor of this work and, as such, had full access to all the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis; R.A. researched data and reviewed the manuscript; P.F researched data and reviewed the manuscript; G.S. reviewed/researched data and wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Giuseppe Seghieri.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest that could be perceived as prejudicing the impartiality of the research reported.

Ethical standard

This study does not allow to disclose patients' identity or other sensitive data. For this reason no approval by an Ethics Committee was required.

Human and animal rights statement

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

Informed consent

Each patient was assigned a unique identifier that was the same for all administrative databases. This identifier does not allow to disclose the patient’s identity and other sensitive data, and therefore, no informed consent was required from all patients for being included in the study.

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Managed by Massimo Porta.

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Supplementary material 1 (DOCX 13 kb)

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Policardo, L., Seghieri, G., Anichini, R. et al. Effect of statins on hospitalization risk of bacterial infections in patients with or without diabetes. Acta Diabetol 54, 669–675 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00592-017-0990-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00592-017-0990-1

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