11.22.2005
New Evidence in Favor of Statin Drugs
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Source: Cognitive Labs NewsWire
New Study Finds Additional Evidence that Statin Drugs May Help Slow Mental Decline in the Elderly. Neurology Reports that a new study recently completed shows that statin drugs can be effective in reducing the impact of cognitive decline. The study was completed on a compound being developed by Nymox (NASDAQ: NYMX)
Researchers in the Cardiovascular Health Study Collaborative Research Group monitored the cognitive abilities of 3,334 people over the age of 65 without dementia for an average of seven years and found that regular statin use was associated with a rate of cognitive decline less than half of that of untreated patients.
These new results published in Neurology (the official scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology) follow on other positive results concerning Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and statin drugs which were released last week. In the first study, statins were found to slow the progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD) in a new three year study of 342 AD patients (J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatry 2005; 76:1624-1629). Researchers in France compared AD patients taking cholesterol-lowering medication including statins to AD patients with unmedicated high cholesterol levels and to AD patients with normal cholesterol. They found that the use of cholesterol-lowering medication significantly slowed the cognitive decline that is the hallmark of AD as compared to both the unmedicated high cholesterol group and the normal cholesterol group.
Statins are a class of cholesterol-lowering drugs that are the biggest-selling prescription pills in pharmaceutical history with estimated 2004 global sales of up to $26 billion. Alzheimer's disease is the leading cause of dementia in the elderly, afflicting an estimated 4.5 million people in the U.S. alone.
New Study Finds Additional Evidence that Statin Drugs May Help Slow Mental Decline in the Elderly. Neurology Reports that a new study recently completed shows that statin drugs can be effective in reducing the impact of cognitive decline. The study was completed on a compound being developed by Nymox (NASDAQ: NYMX)
Researchers in the Cardiovascular Health Study Collaborative Research Group monitored the cognitive abilities of 3,334 people over the age of 65 without dementia for an average of seven years and found that regular statin use was associated with a rate of cognitive decline less than half of that of untreated patients.
These new results published in Neurology (the official scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology) follow on other positive results concerning Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and statin drugs which were released last week. In the first study, statins were found to slow the progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD) in a new three year study of 342 AD patients (J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatry 2005; 76:1624-1629). Researchers in France compared AD patients taking cholesterol-lowering medication including statins to AD patients with unmedicated high cholesterol levels and to AD patients with normal cholesterol. They found that the use of cholesterol-lowering medication significantly slowed the cognitive decline that is the hallmark of AD as compared to both the unmedicated high cholesterol group and the normal cholesterol group.
Statins are a class of cholesterol-lowering drugs that are the biggest-selling prescription pills in pharmaceutical history with estimated 2004 global sales of up to $26 billion. Alzheimer's disease is the leading cause of dementia in the elderly, afflicting an estimated 4.5 million people in the U.S. alone.
