Do Statin Drugs Help Prevent Alzheimer's?

We know that statin drugs lower a person’s cholesterol, but do they also help people avoid dementia and Alzheimer’s? Over the past several years, research results have varied. But a study that came out in the summer of 2008 found that “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,” reports Science Daily.

Are Some Statins Better At Preventing Alzheimer’s?

In 2007, Boston University researcher Benjamin Wolozin, MD, and colleagues analyzed the huge U.S. Veterans Affairs database, with detailed information on 4.5 million patients. According to the description in Web M.D., “some 727,000 of these patients took Zocor, about 54,000 took Lipitor, and about 54,000 took Mevacor.

“In patients over age 64, those who took Zocor were 54% less likely to get Alzheimer's disease and 49% less likely to get Parkinson's disease than were matched patients not taking statin drugs.”

“Those who took Lipitor were 9% less likely to get Alzheimer's disease, a finding that was not statistically significant. . . . Mevacor had no effect on risk of either Alzheimer's disease or Parkinson's disease.”

It’s also encouraging to know that Zocor is available as a generic known as simvastatin, at a fraction of the cost of brand-name statins.

Research in this area is continuing, but statins are emerging as a promising adjunct for Alzheimer’s prevention.