Statins May Help Fight Alzheimer’s

Statins may help fight Alzheimer’s

New Orleans — A small study in which Alzheimer’s patients were given the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor found that their mental capacity stabilized or improved over the course of a year.

The trial is the first involving the use of a statin to treat Alzheimer’s disease.

Doctors said the findings, which were presented here recently at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions, were encouraging. But they cautioned that the number of people in the trial, 46, was small and noted that the research has not yet been subjected to scientific scrutiny.

Two much larger trials testing statins in Alzheimer’s patients are under way, but it likely will be another two years before the results are known.

“I think we need the data from the (large) trials to say anything,” said Neil Buckholtz, chief of the dementias of aging branch of the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health, which is funding one of the large trials.

The people in the pilot study had mild to moderate Alzheimer’s and had an average age of 78.

After being on the drug for one year, 53% had a stabilization or improvement in their mental condition, compared with 28% of those who got a placebo.

“It showed clear clinical benefit,” said lead author Larry Sparks, a researcher with the Roberts Laboratory for Neurodegenerative Disease Research and the Sun Health Research Institute in Sun City, Ariz. “We extended these individuals’ quality of life by at least one year.”

The study was sponsored by the Institute for the Study on Aging and Pfizer Inc., the maker of Lipitor.

Observational studies suggest that people taking statins seem to be at lower risk for developing Alzheimer’s. Animal research suggests that cholesterol may play a role in the formation of amyloid-beta, a protein that clumps in the brain and that may cause the disease.

“The data (from the pilot study) is suggestive, but not definitive,” said William Thies, vice president for medical and science affairs with the Alzheimer’s Association. “We have a huge amount to learn about how statins interact with Alzheimer’s disease.”

Sam Gandy, a professor of neurology and psychiatry at Thomas Jefferson University, said the study was encouraging, but it needs to be published in a medical journal where it can be subjected to scientific scrutiny.