Statin Dose Trajectories and Risk of Graves’ Orbitopathy in Patients with Graves’ Disease Using Clustering Algorithm

Objectives: Graves’ orbitopathy (GO) is an autoimmune condition linked with Graves’ disease (GD). This study focuses on the relationship between statin dose trajectories and the risk of developing GO among GD patients using the data from the National Health Insurance Service (NHIS).Methods: Utilizing the KmL (k-means for longitudinal data) clustering algorithm, we categorized patients with GD and hyperlipidemia into three distinct groups based on their two-year pre-diagnosis statin dosage. A Cox proportional hazards model with inverse probability weighting (IPW) was applied to evaluate the risk of GO across the identified clusters.Results: The findings suggest that patients within the ‘Moderate’ statin dosage cluster are at a statistically lower risk of developing GO compared to those who did not use statins (<i>p</i>= 0.048).Conclusions: Moderate statin use significantly reduces the risk of GO in GD patients. These findings support the potential role of statins in GO prevention.