Utility

1. The statin Simvastatin (SV) and ZKPr together were far more efficient than statin alone in normalizing high blood levels of triglycerides in obese mice, a finding with very likely relevance to obese humans.

2. SV and ZKPr were also more efficient in reducing total cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol when used in combination. Such effects on dyslipidemia are again likely to be relevant to obese humans.

3. Many statin users complain of muscle fatigue/pain that may be due to reduced levels of muscle proteins and proliferation of muscle cells as strongly suggested by animal experiments (see results in the Table). Co-treatment with ZKPr is expected to alleviate statin-related “muscle pain” problem when occurs.

4. There are reports indicating that 15-35% of statin users are at risk of developing diabetes. Data in the Table provides some merit to that observation even though statin had only relatively small enhancing effects on both blood glucose and serum insulin, perhaps explaining why not all statin users are at risk of developing diabetes. However, ZKPr drastically reduced the combined effects of obesity and statin on both glucose and insulin suggesting that adding this protein to the statin treatment may eliminate the “diabetes risk” in non-obese statin users and may result in better control of blood glucose in obese subjects even without additional medications.

5. Taken together, adding ZKPr biweekly to a statin therapy may induce “statin resistant” obese (and perhaps also non-obese) subjects, who abandoned this drug, to re-consider taking it again, this time together with ZKPr.