New York June 15 (IANS) Statins generally used to treat high cholesterol may speed up the onset of Parkinson s disease symptoms in people who are susceptible to the disease says a study.
The findings challenge prevalent perceptions. A recent study reported that people who stopped using statins were more likely to be diagnosed with Parkinson s disease a finding interpreted as evidence that statins protect against Parkinson s disease.
Our new data suggests a different explanation said Xuemei Huang Professor at Penn State College of Medicine in the US.
Use of statins may lead to new Parkinson s disease-related symptoms thus causing patients to stop using statins Huang explained.
Another reason for the inconsistent results is that there are two types of statins.
Water-soluble statins cannot get into the brain while fat-soluble statins called lipophilic can.
Since people with high cholesterol are treated for both kinds the interpretation of results as it relates to Parkinson s disease is not easy.
The researchers analysed data in a commercially-available database of insurance claims for more than 50 million people.
They identified nearly 22 000 people with Parkinson s disease and narrowed the number to 2 322 patients with newly diagnosed Parkinson s disease.
They paired each Parkinson s patient with a person in the database who did not have Parkinson s -- called a control group.
Researchers then determined which patients had been taking a statin and for how long before Parkinson s disease symptoms appeared.
The study published in the journal Movement Disorders showed that prior statin use was associated with higher risk of Parkinson s disease and was more noticeable during the start of the drug use.
Statin use was associated with higher not lower Parkinson s disease risk and the association was more noticeable for lipophilic statins an observation inconsistent with the current hypothesis that these statins protect nerve cells Huang said.
--IANS
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Statins may speed up onset of Parkinson s symptoms
