OBJECTIVES: We examined sponsorship of published economic evaluations of statin use for cardiovascular (CDV) prevention and evaluated whether funding is associated with study conclusions. METHODS: A systematic review was conducted in PubMed/MEDLINE (up to June 2011) to identify cost-effectiveness analyses of statin use for CDV prevention reporting outcomes as cost per life years gained and/or quality-adjusted life years. The review was restricted to 6 licensed statins:  simvastatin, pravastatin, fluvastatin, lovastatin, atorvastatin and rosuvastatin. We classified study intervention data as follows: 1) comparators: statin-statin or statin-non active drug comparisons, and 2) primary or secondary CDV prevention. We established relationships between funding source (industry- vs. non-industry-sponsored studies) and qualitative conclusions (favorable, unfavorable or neutral) by means tests of differences between proportions. RESULTS: Overall, 72 studies were included. Thirty-six studies (50%) were carried out in Europe and 31 (43%) in North America. Fourty-seven (65%) articles compared statins versus non-active drugs. The category of CDV prevention was distributed as follows: 46% secondary, 39% primary and 15% both. Considering funding source, 64% were  industry-sponsored studies. For studies evaluating primary CDV prevention, industry-sponsorship was much less likely to have unfavorable or neutral conclusions (0% vs. 59%; p<0.001). Conversely, these differences were not detected for studies evaluating secondary CDV prevention (0% versus 13%; p=0.212). CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that sponsorship of economic evaluation of statins is associated with their qualitative conclusions in primary CDV prevention.