All those poor people...
Oh 'statin'. Never-mind.
Posted on 09/25/2013 1:35:24 PM PDT by Red Badger
New research that looked at whether two commonly prescribed statin medicines, used to lower low-density lipoprotein (LDL) or 'bad cholesterol' levels in the blood, can adversely affect cognitive function has found that one of the drugs tested caused memory impairment in rats.
Between six and seven million people in the UK take statins daily and the findings follow anecdotal evidence of people reporting that they feel that their newly prescribed statin is affecting their memory. Last year, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) insisted that all manufacturers list in their side effects that statins might affect cognitive function.
The study, led by scientists at the University of Bristol and published in the journal PLOS ONE, tested pravastatin and atorvostatin (two commonly prescribed statins) in rat learning and memory models. The findings show that while no adverse cognitive effects were observed in rat performance for simple learning and memory tasks for atorvostatin, pravastatin impaired their performance.
Rats were treated daily with pravastatin (brand name - Pravachol) or atorvostatin (brand name - Lipitor) for 18 days. The rodents were tested in a simple learning task before, during and after treatment, where they had to learn where to find a food reward. On the last day of treatment and following one week withdrawal, the rats were also tested in a task which measures their ability to recognise a previously encountered object (recognition memory).
The study's findings showed that pravastatin tended to impair learning over the last few days of treatment although this effect was fully reversed once treatment ceased. However, in the novel object discrimination task, pravastatin impaired object recognition memory. While no effects were observed for atorvostatin in either task.
The results suggest that chronic treatment with pravastatin impairs working and recognition memory in rodents. The reversibility of the effects on stopping treatment is similar to what has been observed in patients, but the lack of effect of atorvostatin suggests that some types of statin may be more likely to cause cognitive impairment than others.
Neil Marrion, Professor of Neuroscience at Bristol's School of Physiology and Pharmacology in the Faculty of Medical and Veterinary Sciences and the study's lead author, said: "This finding is novel and likely reflects both the anecdotal reports and FDA advice. What is most interesting is that it is not a feature of all statins. However, in order to better understand the relationship between statin treatment and cognitive function, further studies are needed."
I take Lipitor for the same unknown reason.
ping
You take it to improve your comedy writing.
I took some kind of statin...forgot which one, but I do remember it made my legs hurt something awful! So, I quit taking it. I think.
I’m on Niacin to try to lower/eliminate the Zocor.
Hillary is a rat that must have taken a lot of this.
“I can’t remember, my minds in a blender...it’s jello,jello,jello.”
"What difference does it make?"
All those poor people...
Oh 'statin'. Never-mind.
I keep forgetting to take mine. Then after a few days, I remember to.
I don’t think that this is the first study to make this determination, but what do you do if your Doctor prescribes it anyway?
I’d comment but I don’t remember a single thing I read.
You'll fuhgeddaboudit anyway............
What mg of Niacin are you using & you monitoring by blood work? Any significant changes?
How high was your blood sugar while on Lipitor? I am on simvastatin and mine hovers around 105.
I'm going to have to look for that article.
I did find this:
The researchers analyzed data on 471,250 participants who had no history of diabetes and who were newly using statins - 54% were women.The total risk of developing diabetes was low, but this risk rose among some subjects taking statins. Between 162 and 407 patients would have to be treated with different statins for one extra patient to develop diabetes.
1/162 or 1/407 does not sound like 70%.
bkmk
Statin Brain
Consider loading up on Co-Q-10
about 200mg twice a day will do it
Fixes the Muscle pain, blurry vision, and the stupids
Or... Just don’t take the Statins at all.
I told my Dr. I don’t like what I’ve read about any Statin drugs, and she can pound sand if she expects me to take anything stronger than red yeast rice, or whatever that stuff is. I can’t remember exactly.
She doesn’t like me much.
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