Though high cholesterol may contribute to the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease or a related dementia (ADRD), taking a statin did not seem to protect people from the disease, a study finds. The report was published on March 29 in Alzheimer’s & Dementia.
Clinicians and researchers have speculated that prescribing a statin could reduce the risk of disease development. In the latest study, scientists showed that whether or not a person takes a statin, it does not affect their risk for Alzheimer’s or a related dementia.
“Our study suggests that statin initiation is not significantly associated with ADRD incidence across various sociodemographic subgroups. This result indicates that factors such as age, gender, race/ethnicity, education, marital status, income and immigrant generation do not substantially modify the relationship between statin initiation and ADRD risk,” the authors wrote.
Researchers examined data from 202,837 people who started statins between 2001 and 2010. All of the participants were from the Kaiser Permanente Northern California group. The people were matched by age and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels with those who didn’t start using statins. The team followed everyone until 2020 to see who developed Alzheimer’s or a related dementia. Scientists looked at the effects based on different factors such as age, gender, race/ethnicity, education, marital status and income. They evaluated effects in 32 subgroups.
“Sociodemographic heterogeneity appears to have little to no influence on the relationship between statin initiation and dementia,” the team wrote.
The lack of an association between statin use and ADRD risk indicates that statins may protect people cardiovascularly, but that protection may not be able to safeguard them from dementia.The news preceded a report published Tuesday in the BMJ Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry that found those with low but not extremely low levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL-C) have a lower risk of developing dementia.