Statins May Protect Against Memory-robbing Illness, Dementia

Moving one step further, the U.S. researchers have found statins’ favorable effect on dementia. A new U.S. study suggests that statins can play a crucial role in minimizing the risk of memory loss and dementia in patients.

The findings, published in the July 29 issue of Neurology, suggest that statins, commonly used to reduce heart disease risk, can help older people significantly improve their brain health, providing a ray of hope to all patients suffering from memory loss, dementia, and Alzheimer’s.

In their research, a team of researchers, headed by Mary N. Haan, professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, found that patients who took cholesterol-lowering statin such as Lipitor reduced their risk of dementia by half.

To determine the link between statins and reduced risk of dementia, Haan and colleagues followed 1,674 Mexican-Americans aged 60 and older for five years. All the study participants were dementia and Alzheimer’s-free at the beginning of the trial.

The 27 percent of the participants took cholesterol-lowering drugs at any time during the study. In total, 130 study subjects developed dementia by the end of five years. But the participants who took statins were 50% less likely to develop dementia that of those who didn't take the drugs, the researchers found.

"This is another brick in the wall, in the sense that there is mounting evidence, primarily from observational studies, that there is at least some benefit for prevention of dementia," said lead researcher Haan.

It is believed that a poor supply of blood to the brain promotes the development of dementia. Although, it is not clear how statins work to decrease the development of dementia, the study expains that the cholesterol-lowering drugs help lower levels of cholesterol which clog up the blood vessels, so, if these aforesaid drugs help keep the blood vessels healthy, and allow blood flow freely to the brain, they may help protect against the memory-robbing illness, the study explained.

“The bottom line is that if a person takes statins over a course of about five to seven years, it reduces the risk of dementia by half, and that’s a really big change,” Haan added.

According to statistics, there are about 24 million people with Dementia worldwide.