Xuemei Haung, professor at Penn College of medicine in the U.S. have said that their new report suggests a completely different explanation. "Use of statins may lead to new Parkinson's disease-related symptoms, thus causing patients to stop using statins," Huang explained.
Types of statins
Those statins which get dissolved in water they cannot get into the brain, on the other side while, fat-soluble statins, called lipophilic, they can be dissolved into the brain. Since people having symptoms of high cholesterol are treated for both kinds, the interpretation of results as it relates to Parkinson's disease is not an easy task. The researchers analysed data in a commercially-available database of insurance claims for more than 50 million people. There are nearly 22,000 people having symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, and narrowed the number to 2,322 patients with newly diagnosed Parkinson's disease. They created control group by pairing a Parkinson patient with a normal one in their database. Researchers then determined which patients had been taking a statin and for how long before Parkinson's disease symptoms appeared. The study, published in the journal Movement Disorders, showed that prior statin use was associated with higher risk of Parkinson's disease and was more noticeable during the start of the drug use.
Later, huang said that statin use was related to higher not with lower Prakinson’s disease. And these associations were seeking extra attention for lipophilic statins, an observation inconsistent with the current hypothesis that these statins protect nerve cells.
