Another Large Study Shows Taking a Statin Reduces Risk of Dementia

Taking a statin drug reduces the risk of all types of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease, by 44 percent, according to a large study of 8,574 patients published in the current issue of Neurology.

Nymox Pharmaceutical holds U.S. and global patent rights for the use of statin drugs for the prevention and treatment of Alzheimer's disease, the leading cause of dementia in the elderly. In the study of persons aged 65 or more living in three cities in France, researchers compared the prevalence of dementia among those individuals who took a statin drug to lower their cholesterol against those who did not.

Overall, the prevalence of dementia was 44 percent lower for those individuals taking a statin to lower cholesterol. Most of the dementia cases observed were Alzheimer's disease (65.1 percent).