I wrote several times on my blog about Statins and Alzheimer's. But, this quote in the University of Michigan School of Public Health release caught my attention.
People at high risk for dementia who took cholesterol-lowering statins are half as likely to develop dementia as those who do not take statins.
"The bottom line is that if a person takes statins over a course of about 5-7 years, it reduces the risk of dementia by half, and that's a really big change," said Haan, who notes that the study did not look at statins as a treatment for existing dementia, only as a preventative. Statins are drugs that specifically lower LDL or bad cholesterol.
After I read this I had to ask myself a simple question, should I be taking statins?
My cholesterol is ok, but, everyone in my immediate family suffers from high cholesterol and takes medication. Even with medication, my mother suffers from high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and Alzheimer's.
I'll discuss this with my personal physician shortly and make the decision.
Statins may protect against memory loss
People at high risk for dementia who took cholesterol-lowering statins are half as likely to develop dementia as those who do not take statins, a new study shows.
The study consisted of older Mexican-Americans in Sacramento, Calif., who suffered from metabolic conditions that put them at risk for developing dementia, Alzheimer's or cognitive impairment without dementia, said Mary Haan, epidemiology professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and lead author of the study. Some of the risk factors for dementia include high cholesterol, Type 2 diabetes, obesity and hypertension.
"The bottom line is that if a person takes statins over a course of about 5-7 years, it reduces the risk of dementia by half, and that's a really big change," said Haan, who notes that the study did not look at statins as a treatment for existing dementia, only as a preventative. Statins are drugs that specifically lower LDL or bad cholesterol.
The longitudinal study was originally funded in 1997 to look at metabolic and vascular conditions like hypertension and diabetes and their effect on the risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease. Earlier landmark findings by Haan's group of the same study cohort established that certain metabolic and vascular disorders predicted Alzheimer's and dementia. For instance, people with Type 2 diabetes are up to three times more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease, they found.
In this current study, Haan's group set out to measure whether taking statins over time lowered the development of dementia in that same high-risk population. The resulting paper, "Use of Statins and Incidence of Cognitively Impaired Not Demented and Dementia in a Cohort Study," will appear in the July 29 issue of Neurology.
"In older people you have so many different chronic conditions, especially in this group, that the chance of any intervention having an effect is fairly limited," Haan said. "Say you're 75 or 80 and you've got six diseases. How much is a treatment really going to help? This showed if you started using statins before the dementia developed you could prevent it in about half of the cases."
