statin
/ˈstætɪn/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.54 in modern English
6
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Any of a class of drugs, the HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors, that lower the amount of cholesterol in the blood by inhibiting an enzyme involved in its biosynthesis.
noun
An inhibiting hormone: a hormone that is involved primarily in inhibiting the release of another hormone.
Example Sentences
- "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."
- "Among the latest are reports of the ability of several leading statins to reduce deaths from common cancers and blunt the decline of memory with age."
Etymology
From the suffix -statin, which was used for inhibiting hormone names before it was used for HMG-CoA reductase inhibitor drug names (but, like statin, has since become much better known in the latter sense).