Statin
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Any of a class of drugs (chiefly lactones or pyrroles) that lower the amount of cholesterol in the blood by inhibiting an enzyme involved in its biosynthesis.
"The researchers found that statins were likely to provide benefits at a substantially higher health risk than expected and that those risk levels were lower for atorvastatin and rosuvastatin than for simvastatin and pravastatin. […] Yet some of the statin side effects mentioned in the study have not been proved in the scientific literature or are exaggerated and could cause unnecessary worry, he said."
- 2 a medicine that lowers blood cholesterol levels by inhibiting HMG-CoA reductase wordnet
- 3 An inhibiting hormone; a hormone that is involved primarily in inhibiting the release of another hormone.
Example
More examples"A trial is underway to see whether drugs commonly used to manage heart disease in the general population, like statin medications, benefit people infected with HIV."
Etymology
From the suffix -statin, from terms such as lovastatin and simvastatin.
Related phrases
More for "statin"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.