Statin use is associated with a 61% greater risk of Parkinson’s disease according to an analysis of data on 30,343,035 people aged 40 to 65 years between January 1, 2008 and December 31, 2012.
This was after adjusting for age, sex, and other comorbidities, such as hyperlipidemia, diabetes, hypertension, and coronary artery disease.
“We identified 20,000 Parkinson’s disease patients and looked at whether using statins was associated with a higher or lower risk, and we found people using statins have a higher risk of the disease, so this is the opposite of what has been hypothesized,” senior author Xuemei Huang, MD, PhD, vice chair for research at Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, Pennsylvania, told Medscape Medical News.
“Our study suggests that lowering cholesterol unnecessarily actually may harm the brain,” Xuemei Huang, MD, PhD lead author of the study was quoted as saying.
Previous research has failed to recognize this or reported the opposite, that statins lower the risk of Parkinson’s, because previous studies have failed to adjust for cholesterol levels.
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