And a study published in 2003 in Reviews of Therapeutics noted that among 60 statin users who had reported memory problems to MedWatch, more than half said their symptoms improved when they stopped taking the drugs.īut other studies have found no significant link between statins and memory problems.
#Reddit wreck it ralph 2 trial#
The second trial reported similar findings. Subjects who were on statins, however, did not show the normal improvement-suggesting their learning was impaired. The first, which enrolled 209 high-cholesterol subjects, reported that participants taking placebo pills improved more on repeated tests of attention and reaction time taken over the course of six months-presumably getting better because of practice, as people typically do. Two small trials published in 20 by Matthew Muldoon, a clinical pharmacologist at the University of Pittsburgh, seem to suggest a link between statins and cognitive problems. “We can’t understand how a drug that affects such an important pathway would not have adverse reactions,” says Ralph Edwards, former director of the World Health Organization’s drug-monitoring center in Uppsala, Sweden. Quick thinking and rapid reaction times depend on cholesterol, too, because the waxy molecules are the building blocks of the sheaths that insulate neurons and speed up electrical transmissions. In the brain, however, cholesterol plays a crucial role in the formation of neuronal connections-the vital links that underlie memory and learning. High levels of cholesterol in the blood create a risk for heart disease, because the molecules that transport cholesterol can damage arteries and cause blockages. Cholesterol is a waxy substance that, among other things, provides structure to the body’s cell membranes.
It is not crazy to connect cholesterol-modifying drugs with cognition after all, one quarter of the body’s cholesterol is found in the brain. Nevertheless, many experts are starting to believe that a small percentage of the population is at risk, and they are calling for increased public awareness of the possible cognitive side effects of statins-symptoms that may be misdiagnosed as dementia in the aging patients who take them. Food and Drug Administration’s adverse drug reaction database, but few studies have been done and the results are inconclusive. Hundreds of people have registered complaints with MedWatch, the U.S.
But recently a small number of users have voiced concerns that the drugs elicit unexpected cognitive side effects, such as memory loss, fuzzy thinking and learning difficulties. Only one thing came to mind: he had recently started taking the statin drug Lipitor.Ĭholesterol-lowering statins such as Lipitor, Crestor and Zocor are the most widely prescribed medications in the world, and they are credited with saving the lives of many heart disease patients. When Graveline’s memory returned some six hours later in the hospital, he racked his brain to figure out what might have caused this terrifying bout of amnesia. His wife stepped outside, and he greeted her as a stranger. ONE DAY IN 1999, Duane Graveline, then a 68-year-old former NASA astronaut, returned home from his morning walk in Merritt Island, Fla., and could not remember where he was.