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Drugs designed to fight cholesterol might also prevent Alzheimer’s and other dementia Older people taking statin drugs are less likely to develop dementia than their counterparts who don’t take the pills, a study in the July 29 Neurology suggests. While the provocative finding offers hope that the cholesterol-reducing drugs might help against Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, scientists say this study is unlikely to be the last word on the topic. Indeed, it may just fuel an already lively debate over statins’ potential effect on dementia. Some research has hinted at benefits, while other studies, particularly in people...

Reuters Health Wednesday, June 25, 2008 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Use of cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins rose by 156 percent between 2000 and 2005, with spending jumping from $7.7 billion to $19.7 billion, the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality reported on Wednesday. "The number of people purchasing statins nearly doubled when comparing 2000 and 2005, rising from 15.8 million people to 29.7 million people," the AHRQ report reads. The total number of outpatient prescriptions for statins rose from about 90 million in 2000 to nearly 174 million in 2005. Each individual spent $484 a year on average on statins...

A health study by Japanese researchers has found that people with low levels of LDL cholesterol -- often referred to as "bad cholesterol" -- are more likely to die than those with higher levels. The finding comes as Japan prepares to introduce special health checkups from April, which list high LDL cholesterol as a factor in deciding whether a person has metabolic syndrome. It is likely the results of the survey will stir debate over the designation of LDL cholesterol as "bad." The study was led by Tokai University professor Yoichi Ogushi, who surveyed roughly 26,000 people who had at...

Enterprise: When a great American company offers a medicine that lengthens the lives of hundreds of millions of people, you might think politicians would say thank you. Instead they say: How dare you advertise it.Pfizer has just been pressured by Congress into dropping its main ad campaign for the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor, arguably the most popular medicine in the world and with very good reason. Lipitor can lower the deadly artery-clogging substance by as much as 60% and, when combined with regular exercise and a low-fat diet, prevents heart attacks and sudden deaths. Companies who do so much for so...

Potentially deadly staph bacteria may be easily defeated by the body's own immune system once stripped of their golden hue by a drug developed to lower cholesterol, according to new research.The findings offer a promising new direction in the fight against increasingly drug-resistant staph infections, according to the National Institutes of Health, which supported the research. An international team of researchers found that a "squalene synthase inhibitor," originally developed by Bristol Myers Squibb, blocks infections of Staphylococcus aureus, named for its "golden halo," in mice.Staph contains a carotenoid -- like beta carotene in carrots -- that acts like an antioxidant...

Statins are among the most prescribed drugs in the world, and there is no doubt that they work as advertised — that they lower not only cholesterol but also the risk for heart attack. But in the fallout from the headline-making trial of Vytorin, a combination drug that was found to be no more effective than a simple statin in reducing arterial plaque, many people are asking a more fundamental question about statins in general: Do they prolong your life? And for many users, the surprising answer appears to be no. Some patients do receive significant benefits from statins, like...

American Heart Association meeting report ORLANDO, Nov. 7 — A cholesterol-lowering drug appears to disrupt sleep patterns of some patients, researchers reported at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2007. “The findings are significant because sleep problems can affect quality of life and may have adverse health consequences, such as promoting weight gain and insulin resistance,” said Beatrice Golomb, M.D., lead author of the study and an associate professor of medicine and family and preventive medicine at the University of California at San Diego School of Medicine. In the largest study of its kind, researchers compared two types of cholesterol-lowering...

Statins are known to be good for lowering cholesterol and maybe even fighting dementia, and now they have another reported benefit: they appear to slow decline in lung function in the elderly— even in those who smoke. According to researchers in Boston, it may be statins’ anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties that help achieve this effect. To determine whether smoking status modified that effect, the researchers also divided their subjects into four smoking groups: never-smokers, long-ago quitters, recent quitters and current smokers. “Within each smoking group, those not taking statins were estimated to experience faster declines in FEV1 and FVC than...

On June 19, 1987, Ben & Jerry’s introduced Cherry Garcia, in honor of the man who played lead guitar for the Grateful Dead. The Food and Drug Administration struck back three months later, when it approved the first of a new family of statin drugs that curb cholesterol production in the human liver. A synthetic statin licensed a decade later would become the most lucrative drug in history. At its peak, Lipitor was streaming $14 billion a year into Pfizer’s coffers. Let’s not blame the victim: we don’t choose Cherry Garcia; it chooses us. Lipitor is a lifesaver for 600,000...

Elderly people taking statins had fewer of the twisted nerve-cell fibers that are common in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease, researchers reported last week in a study based on brain autopsies. The significance of the finding remains unclear, but this is the first time the potential effects of the cholesterol-lowering statins on brain pathology have been assessed by autopsy. Epidemiological studies of statins and Alzheimer's have had mixed results. The researchers examined the brains of 110 men and women ages 65 to 79 who were enrolled in a larger study of dementia and had donated their brains for...

Source: American Association for Cancer Research Date: August 10, 2007 No Evidence That Widely Prescribed Statins Protect Against Prostate Cancer Science Daily — A large community-based study refutes previous findings that statins -- a top-selling drug class, worldwide -- might cut one's risk of developing prostate cancer by reducing production of the male hormones that fuel cancer growth. Researchers from the New England Research Institutes found that while men using statins did indeed have lower blood levels of androgens such as testosterone, it was more likely attributable to poor health rather than the use of statins. "The public health significance...

As he examined data on a computer one day last fall, drug-safety reviewer Ralph Edwards saw something that concerned him: Of 172 people in his database who developed Lou Gehrig's disease or something similar while taking prescription medicines, 40 had been on statins, the huge-selling cholesterol drugs. Dr. Edwards, director of the World Health Organization's drug-monitoring center, has amassed about four million reports of medical problems experienced by people taking prescription drugs. His job is to sift through these so-called adverse events, looking for "signals" of potential side effects. The number of Lou Gehrig's cases associated with statins struck Dr....

The deeper I go into it, the fishier statins seem to become James.LeFanu@telegraph.co.uk, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 11:25pm BST 31/03/2007 Second opinion Statins again, whose mass prescription is turning out to be much more serious (and sinister) than I could have supposed. The response to my last two columns has been, almost literally, overwhelming, so why are doctors apparently so unaware of the devastating symptoms they can cause? The British Heart Foundation (whose chairman, Professor Peter Weissberg accused me last week of being "easily led" on this matter) claims that statins have "minimal side effects" compared to those taking controlled...

If you want to feel younger, forget your statins By James LeFanu, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 11:20pm GMT 17/03/2007 A doctor accused of wittingly prescribing useless or possibly lethal drugs would vehemently - and understandably - deny it. This makes it rather difficult to oppose the prevailing medical consensus on statins - the cholesterol-lowering drugs prescribed to four million people in Britain at a cost of £1 billion a year. That's quite a sum. It could pay the salaries of 700,000 nurses or build two spanking new teaching hospitals. An even bigger sum is £15 billion. That is the profit...

Statins defend against fungus-caused sepsis Nathan Seppa From San Francisco, at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy When a blood infection causes an inflammatory reaction that attacks the entire circulatory system, the result is a condition called sepsis that's fatal about 40 percent of the time. A new study suggests that sepsis brought on by a fungal infection is less lethal in people taking cholesterol-lowering pills called statins than in those not getting the drugs. Physician Graeme Forrest of the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore says that he noticed reports suggesting that statins improve the survival...

WASHINGTON - The world’s top-selling drugs, cholesterol-lowering statins, might provide a way to treat feared bird flu, according to a doctor and retired drug company executive who is trying to get the researchers to study the possibility. Antivirals that affect the influenza virus are in short supply, and it will be years before vaccine makers can ramp up capacity enough to immunize the world’s population against a pandemic flu. But what if there was a cheap and widely available drug that helped treat the flu’s worst symptoms and possibly save lives? Evidence suggests that statin drugs, designed to lower cholesterol,...

AP MEDICAL WRITER CHICAGO -- Statins, the cholesterol-lowering drugs taken by millions of Americans, might also reduce the risk of cataracts, a preliminary study suggests. Adults who took statins were found to be 45 percent less likely to develop the most common type of age-related cataracts. Other researchers warned that something other than statins might explain the results and that the study does not prove cause-and-effect. The results were a surprise because of earlier concerns that some cholesterol medication might increase the risk of cataracts, a common clouding-over of the lens of the eye that can lead to poor vision...

Policosanol and Cholesterol Revisited Policosanol, a mixture of waxy alcohols derived from sugar cane, rice bran oil, or wheat germ oil, has remarkable benefits for atherosclerosis that go beyond lowering cholesterol. Doctors recommend statin drugs to lower cholesterol, often even for people with normal serum levels, noting that these drugs have other benefits in stabilizing plaque and protecting endothelial cells. A friend told me that she lowered her cholesterol from 224 to 178 by taking policosanol, but her doctor was concerned that she might not be getting “all the benefits” of statins (but of course she was also avoiding the...

FDA Issues Warning on Use of Cholesterol Drug, Especially by Asians The popular new cholesterol-lowering drug Crestor may cause an increased risk of potentially life-threatening muscle damage, especially in people of Asian ancestry, the Food and Drug Administration said yesterday. In a formal advisory, the agency said the risk is small and was largely identified and understood when the drug was approved in 2003. But because of new post-market studies that underscored the concerns, the agency concluded that the public should be informed and that warnings on the product label should be strengthened. The advisory, and accompanying new instructions to...

The Washington Times www.washingtontimes.com FDA mulls availability of drug for cholesterolBy Tom RamstackTHE WASHINGTON TIMESPublished January 14, 2005 A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel is scheduled to recommend today whether a drug aimed at treating high cholesterol should be sold from store shelves like common remedies for headaches, colds and allergies.     Merck & Co. and Johnson & Johnson, in a joint venture, have asked the FDA to let them sell a low-dose version of cholesterol-lowering Mevacor directly to consumers.     During the first day of a two-day hearing yesterday at a Bethesda, Md., hotel, FDA drug advisers questioned whether...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The government is considering whether a drug for a serious chronic condition - high cholesterol - should sit on drugstore shelves alongside medicines for headaches, allergies and athlete's foot. Supporters say making a low-dose cholesterol medicine available without a doctor's prescription would help get needed treatment to millions of Americans who are at risk of heart disease. "There's a huge treatment gap," said Jerry Hansen, vice president of marketing at Johnson & Johnson-Merck Consumer Pharmaceuticals Co., a joint venture that is asking the Food and Drug Administration for permission to sell a low-dose version of Mevacor over...

Suppose there were an anti-inflammatory drug that sharply reduced the level of CRP, the protein that has proved to be as powerful an indicator of heart disease risk as high cholesterol. A doctor might well prescribe such a drug for a patient with high levels of the protein. After all, CRP is linked to inflammation, and high levels of it are linked to heart attacks. As it turns out, there are such drugs. But this may not be good news. The anti-inflammatory drugs that lower CRP levels are COX-2 inhibitors, the very drugs that were recently found to increase the...

Among cardiologists, it has become a running joke: maybe the powerful drugs known as statins should be added to the water supply. Not only do statins greatly reduce cholesterol and lower mortality in people at risk for heart attacks, but some studies also suggest that they might help to prevent or treat a wide range of ailments, including Alzheimer's disease, multiple sclerosis, bone fractures, some types of cancer, macular degeneration and glaucoma. An estimated 11 million Americans take statins. With new government recommendations issued last week, millions more are likely to begin taking the drugs, and many who already take...

Federal health officials yesterday sharply reduced the desired levels of harmful cholesterol for Americans who are at moderate to high risk for heart disease. The new recommendations call for treatment with cholesterol-lowering drugs for millions of Americans who had thought their cholesterol levels were fine. Already more than 10 million people take the drugs. But now, more should start, the recommendations say. For people at the highest risk, they suggest that the target level of L.D.L., the type of cholesterol that increases the likelihood of heart disease, should be less than 100. That is 30 points lower than previously recommended....

Alzheimer's disease can seem unrelentingly grim. There is no cure, no known way to prevent the illness, and the benefits of current treatments are modest at best. But in laboratories around the country, scientists are uncovering clues that may eventually — perhaps even in the next two decades — allow them to prevent, slow or even reverse the ruthless progression of the illness. "Things are more hopeful than perhaps people think," Dr. Karen Duff of the Nathan Kline Institute of New York University said. "We are on the cusp of having something really useful." That hope comes on the heels...

Widely used cholesterol-lowering drugs could relieve multiple sclerosis, say researchers. The drugs might also work on other diseases where the immune system attacks the body. The drugs, called statins, are commonly prescribed to fight heart disease. The new study shows that they may also work on the immune system, reducing brain inflammation. Multiple sclerosis is thought to arise when the immune system assaults the nervous system. It strikes with unpredictable symptoms including fatigue, tremor and paralysis. Existing treatments can slow, but not stop, the advance of the disease. Scott Zamvil of the University of California, San Francisco, and his team...