High doses of statins may prevent dementia in older age, a new research has claimed.
The study of nearly 58,000 patients found that high potency statins had the strongest protective effects against dementia.
Researchers examined whether statin use was associated with new diagnoses of dementia. They used a random sample of one million patients covered by Taiwan's National Health Insurance.
They identified 57,669 patients aged more than 65 years who had no history of dementia in 1997 and 1998. The analysis included pre-senile and senile dementia but excluded vascular dementia.
There were 5,516 new diagnoses of dementia during approximately 4.5 years of follow-up. The remaining 52,153 patients aged more than 65 formed the control group.
Subjects were divided into tertiles according to their mean daily equivalent dosage and total (across the entire follow up period) equivalent dosage.
The adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) for dementia were significantly inversely associated with increased daily or total equivalent statin dosage.
The HRs for the three tertiles of mean equivalent daily dosage (lowest to highest) were 0.622, 0.697 and 0.419 vs control.
The HRs for the three tertiles of total equivalent dosage (lowest to highest) were 0.773, 0.632 and 0.332 vs control. The protective effect of statins remained in different age, gender and cardiovascular risk subgroups.
"The adjusted risks for dementia were significantly inversely associated with increased total or daily equivalent statin dosage," Dr Tin-Tse Lin, who presenting the study at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress, said.
"Patients who received the highest total equivalent doses of statins had a 3-fold decrease in the risk of developing dementia. Similar results were found with the daily equivalent statin dosage," Lin said.
"It was the potency of the statins rather than their solubility (lipophilic or hydrophilic) which was a major determinant in reducing dementia. High potency statins such as atorvastatin and rosuvastatin showed a significant inverse association with developing dementia in a dose-response manner. Higher doses of high potency statins gave the strongest protective effects against dementia," said Lin.
