Thursday, April 10, 2008

Lovastatin Shown To Slow Progression Of Alzheimer's Disease


This is a classic example of the Alzheimer's CareGiver conundrum. I switched my mother from Lovastin to Zocor after reading a similar article pointing out the benefits of statins.

I'll put the article up on Zocor soon.
High cholesterol levels are considered to be a risk factor for cardiovascular disease including stroke. Therefore, many cholesterol lowering drugs have been developed by pharmaceutical companies in recent years. One class of these drugs, statins, has been found to reduce the incidence of stroke and progression of Alzheimer's disease when prophylactically administered.

In a recent paper published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, Amalia Dolga and co-workers from the University of Groningen show that the statin lovastatin, in addition to lowering cholesterol, can also prevent nerve cells from dying in conditions that occur in Alzheimer's disease

Amalia Dolga found that statins stimulate nerve cells to produce a specific receptor molecule for a protein which plays a central role in the body's immune response:
Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.
 blog it

No comments:

Post a Comment