Statins and C-reactive protein: in silico evidenceon direct interaction
Neda Shakour, Massimiliano Ruscica, Farzin Hadizadeh, Cesare Cirtori, Maciej Banach, Tannaz Jamialahmadi, Amirhossein Sahebkar
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Statins are known to lower CRP, and this reduction has been suggested to contribute to the established efficacy of these drugs in reducing cardiovascular events and outcomes. However, the exact mechanism underlying the CRP-lowering effect of statins remains elusive. METHODS: study by testing the orientation of the respective ligands (statins) and phosphorylcholine (the standard ligand of CRP) in the CRP active site using Molecular Operating Environment (MOE) software. RESULTS: Docking experiments showed that all statins could directly interact with CRP. Among statins, rosuvastatin had the strongest interaction with CRP (pKi = 16.14), followed by fluvastatin (pKi = 15.58), pitavastatin (pKi = 15.26), atorvastatin (pKi = 14.68), pravastatin (pKi = 13.95), simvastatin (pKi = 7.98) and lovastatin (pKi = 7.10). According to the above-mentioned results, rosuvastatin, fluvastatin, pitavastatin and atorvastatin were found to have stronger binding to CRP compared with the standard ligand phosphocholine (pKi = 14.55). CONCLUSIONS: This finding suggests a new mechanism of interaction between statins and CRP that could be independent of the putative cholesterol-lowering activity of statins.