Statins Aren’t Perfect – They Don’t Work in Alzheimer’s

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the finding that statins reduce mortality in diabetics. Earlier I’ve written about the other good things statins can do, asking rhetorically if they are the ‘new aspirin’. Well, in spite of some early promising findings, a report in the journal Neurology now shows that statins offer no protection against Alzheimer’s disease.

The participants in the study were 900-plus Catholic clergy enrolled in the Religious Order Study. Their average age was 75, and 69% were women; they all agreed to annual evaluations and brain autopsy after death. Of the 929 subjects, 119 were statin users at baseline. During follow-up over the next 12 years, 191 subjects developed Alzheimer’s, 16 of whom were baseline statin users. After adjustments to remove bias due to age, sex, and education level, baseline stain use was not linked to the risk of developing Alzheimer’s. The type of statin played no role. And there was no influence of statin use on the classical Alzheimer’s pathology found on autopsy.

You can’t win ‘em all. Statins lower LDL cholesterol, the frequency of cardiovascular disease and its serious events (heart attack, stroke, severe angina, congestive heart failure, or sudden heart death), and apparently inhibit inflammatory changes in the body (CRP elevation, etc) leading to diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and ulcerative colitis, and even lung cancer. We’ll just have to find another aspirin for preventing Alzheimer’s.