Research

Mixed

High cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) can neutralize the increased risk of type 2 diabetes associated with statin use, whereas low or moderate CRF does not.

If you take statins, maintaining high cardiorespiratory fitness is crucial to offset the potential increased risk of type 2 diabetes. While statins are linked to higher diabetes risk in less fit individuals, those with high fitness levels do not show this increased risk. Prioritize cardiovascular exercise to maintain high fitness if you are on statin therapy.

ModerateQualifiesMEDIUM confidence
Notably, using the data from statin nonusers as the referent, statin users had an increased risk of type 2 diabetes in the lowest (HR: 1.90...) and moderate CRF categories (HR: 1.22...) but did not have an increased risk in the highest CRF category (HR: 0.91...)
Shanhu Qiu et al. · Obesity · 2019

Why this rating

Based on only 3 studies with a smaller sample size (12,311 statin users) compared to the general population analysis.

Source

Association Between Cardiorespiratory Fitness and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes: A Meta‐Analysis

Shanhu Qiu et al. · Obesity · 2019

DOI 10.1002/oby.22368

Meta-analysis · 15 studiesCited 52×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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