HMGCR and familial hypercholesterolemia: Similar to ZA, the cholesterol-lowering drug simvastatin used to treat patients with hypercholesterolemia, inhibits the same polyisoprenoid lipid production pathways in S. aureus. Simvastatin is a competitive inhibitor of HMG-CoA reductase, an enzyme upstream of squalene synthase in the constituent lipid biosynthesis pathway [70].