Skip to main content

Alzheimer's Disease and Statin Drugs

New research says that taking cholesterol-lowering (statin) drugs, offers no protection against Alzheimer’s disease as opposed to earlier reports which indicated otherwise. The January 16, 2008, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology reports on a study that found no relationship between statin use and Alzheimer’s disease.

929 people with an average age of 75 who were studied for up to 12 years and agreed to a brain autopsy at death. 119 were taking statins at the beginning of the study. During the 12 years, 191 people developed Alzheimer’s disease with 16 of those being ones on the statins.

“Some studies have suggested people taking cholesterol-lowering drugs are less likely to have Alzheimer’s disease, but our longitudinal findings found no relation between statin use and Alzheimer’s,” said study author Zoe Arvanitakis, MD, MS, Associate Professor of the Department of Neurological Sciences at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and member of the American Academy of Neurology. “The study also found no association between taking statins and a slower cognitive decline among older people.”

Researchers performed brain autopsies on more than 250 people who died during the study to examine the relation of statins to Alzheimer’s disease pathology and stroke in the brain, the two common pathological causes of dementia. The study found statin use at any time during the course of the study had no effect on pathology of Alzheimer’s disease or strokes.

These study results are limited, so no conclusive opinions should be made, just yet. Future studies will need to look at the associations of statins with other pathologic changes of Alzheimer’s disease that were not examined in this study. For more information see the website of the American Academy of Neurology: www.aan.com.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Clifton B. Kruse, Jr., Leading Elder Law Attorney, Dies at 74

Clifton B. Kruse , Jr., a revered elder law attorney who was admired as much for his kindness and generosity to fellow practitioners as for his grasp of the law, died December 30, 2008, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He was 74. The cause was complications from Alzheimer's disease. For many in the field, Kruse set the standard for all that an elder law attorney can and should be. One of elder law's founding fathers, he combined a gentlemanly charm, warmth and caring with one of the sharpest and most ethical of legal minds. Wrote Arizona elder law attorney Robert Fleming in a tribute , "In my third of a century of elder law practice I have never met another lawyer who managed to pull together sophistication, heartfelt empathy, intellectual rigor and courtly manner in the same fashion Clifton Kruse projected. He did it, to all appearances, effortlessly. He was a friend and mentor to many in the elder law community (I count myself among those legions)." Kruse was the e...

Knee Surgery OK for Octogenarians

Knee replacement surgery can improve the quality of life even for very elderly patients, according to a study presented at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) . The study found that patients in their 80s can benefit both physically and socially from knee replacement surgery, also called total knee arthroplasty (TKA), once thought too risky for the very elderly. “As patients are living longer, there is an upward trend in the demand for quality of life among the elderly population,” said Edsel Arandia, M.D., lead author of the study and an orthopaedic surgeon at Philippine Orthopaedic Center and a Fellow at Singapore General Hospital. “As patients age, debilitating diseases like arthritis of the knee begin to develop. We conducted this study to determine the viability of TKA in octogenarians and to learn whether their quality of life improves after TKA.” Dr. Arandia and his team reviewed data from 128 patients older than 80 years of age wh...

Harry's Law gets Medicaid Planning All Wrong

I usually enjoy David Kelley's crazy law-related television shows like Boston Legal and Harry's Law. They are great fun and often give some good portrayals of lawyers and legal issues. But, I'm always laughing at how a client comes in to the office in the morning and somehow they are in Court in the afternoon - sometimes with a jury there. It takes years to get into Court most of the time and at least several days to get a jury together and ready for a trial. But, I'll allow some literary license to TV to keep the story moving. But, I don't like it when they get the law completely wrong and especially when they have the lawyers participate in fraud. Last week's episode of Harry's Law got the Medicaid rules wrong, and put lawyers in a bad light. Let me explain. First, Kelley got Medicaid law all wrong. The couple in question only had a house and the husband needed nursing home care. The wife said she needed to get a divorce to save the house. This is wron...