Statins May Protect Against Dementia

New findings suggest that simvastatin is linked with a lower incidence of dementia and Parkinson's disease. Disagreement over whether statins could protect against these disorders has meant the benefits to dementia sufferers to date have been unclear.

Statins are cholesterol-lowering drugs used by those individuals with heart disease. An international team led by Benjamin Wolozin, M.D., from the Boston University School of Medicine (Boston, MA, USA) used data from the US Veterans Affairs Database, which contains diagnostic, medication, and demographic information on 4.5 million subjects. The researchers utilized statistical models to compare different statins, evaluating data on over 700,000 simvastatin users and more than 50,000 atorvastatin users. The investigators targeted those aged 65 or over with no prior diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease, who had been taking statins for at least seven months.

The researchers discovered that for individuals aged 65 and over, simvastatin was associated with a considerably decreased number of cases of dementia and Parkinson's disease. The researchers also made the unexpected finding that not all statins are equal when it comes to dementia or Parkinson's disease. A small decrease in dementia cases was seen among those who regularly take atorvastatin, which did not reach a level of statistical significance. Lovastatin was not found to have any significant effect on dementia, and neither atorvastatin nor lovastatin were linked with a decrease in the number of cases of Parkinson's disease.

"The strength of reduction of incidence of dementia observed with simvastatin is striking,” the investigators wrote in their article. Additional research should confirm that it is simvastatin's biologic mode of action instead of a statistical bias at work. Earlier research has studied whether statin treatment is helpful for dementia sufferers or those at risk of dementia, but such studies have lead to some conflicting results. The current study gives more accurate results as it has significant statistical strength, according to the researchers, and incorporates existing data to investigate dementia and Parkinson's disease comprehensively.

The study was published in the online open access journal BMC Medicine July 19, 2007.


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