“These findings confirm that short-acting statins should be taken in the evening and the authors suggest that long-acting statins can also be taken in the morning, if this facilitates patient compliance,” the researchers concluded.
Short acting and long-acting – what’s the difference?
Short acting statins include pravastatin, simvastatin, lovastatin, and fluvastatin with half-lives of two to five hours.
Long-acting statins include rosuvastatin and atorvastatin with half-lives of 14 to 19 hours.
The half-life of a drug is the time it takes for the amount of a drug’s active substance in your body to reduce by half.