Statin Drugs Reduce the Risk of Parkinson's Disease

Beate Ritz, M.D., Ph.D., et. al.
UCLA School of Public Health
NIEHS Grants U54ES012078, R01ES010544, and P30ES007048

Using cholesterol reducing statin drugs may decrease a person's risk for developing Parkinson's disease according to a new NIEHS-supported epidemiologic study conducted at UCLA. The study reported that people who used statins for at least five years had about one-third the risk of Parkinson's as compared to the control group. Study subjects were recruited from three rural counties in California.

The researchers are quick to point out that just because this study shows an association between lower risk and statin use, it does not prove that the cholesterol-reducing drugs prevent the devastating neurological disorder. The research team headed by Dr. Angelika Warner conclude that the findings are preliminary and need to be confirmed in additional well-designed studies with larger populations of subjects.

Subjects included 312 Parkinson's patients along with 342 adults without the disease. The median age of all participants was 70 years. Overall about 19 percent of the subjects had taken statin drugs at some point and there was a higher frequency of statin use in healthy adults than those with Parkinson's. The odds of having Parkinson's declined as the duration of statin use increased, with the strongest protection seen in people who had taken the drugs for longer than five years.

Lower risks were seen in people taking atorvastatin, simastatin, and lovastatin, but not pravastatin. Additional research will be carried out on the Parkinson's-cholesterol-statin use links. These studies are important as the aging population increasingly suffers the burden of Parkinson's and other neurodegenerative diseases.

Citation: Wahner AD, Bronstein JM, Bordelon YM, Ritz B. Statin use and the risk of Parkinson disease. Neurology. 2008 Apr 15;70(16 Pt 2):1418-22.