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Statins and Alzheimer — current stand and further development directions
Affiliations- Collegium Medicum, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Bydgoszcz, Poland
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Abstract
In an aging society, more emphasis should be placed on prevention rather than treating diseases. Alzheimer’s disease is a common sickness affecting older people. It is predicted that the number of cases will have increased up to 131.5 million by 2050. Therefore, the efforts of the scientific community should be focused on finding therapeutics that could stop or delay dementia. Statins are commonly used drugs with interesting pleiotropic effects. Due to its effects such as lowering cholesterol or inhibiting of inflammatory reaction, they give the prospect of being used in dementia therapy. To this day, numerous studies have been done to verify the influence of statins on pathological elements such as beta-amyloid, Tau protein, or inflammatory factors. Unfortunately, a large discrepancy in the results excludes the use of these drugs in therapy today. The aim of our work is to validate these relations and determine the mechanisms of action of statins on the pathophysiology of Alzheimer’s disease. Moreover, we want to point out new directions of research, which may not only explain the pathomechanism of dementia but also find means to stop this process.
Abstract
In an aging society, more emphasis should be placed on prevention rather than treating diseases. Alzheimer’s disease is a common sickness affecting older people. It is predicted that the number of cases will have increased up to 131.5 million by 2050. Therefore, the efforts of the scientific community should be focused on finding therapeutics that could stop or delay dementia. Statins are commonly used drugs with interesting pleiotropic effects. Due to its effects such as lowering cholesterol or inhibiting of inflammatory reaction, they give the prospect of being used in dementia therapy. To this day, numerous studies have been done to verify the influence of statins on pathological elements such as beta-amyloid, Tau protein, or inflammatory factors. Unfortunately, a large discrepancy in the results excludes the use of these drugs in therapy today. The aim of our work is to validate these relations and determine the mechanisms of action of statins on the pathophysiology of Alzheimer’s disease. Moreover, we want to point out new directions of research, which may not only explain the pathomechanism of dementia but also find means to stop this process.
Keywords
Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, statins, inflammatory factors, cholesterol, amyloid-beta, Tau protein
About this articleTitle
Statins and Alzheimer — current stand and further development directions
Journal
Issue
Article type
Review article
Pages
191-200
Published online
2020-06-15
Page views
757
Article views/downloads
1406
DOI
Bibliographic record
Medical Research Journal 2020;5(3):191-200.
Keywords
Alzheimer’s disease
dementia
statins
inflammatory factors
cholesterol
amyloid-beta
Tau protein
Authors
Adam Wełniak
Paulina Koszykowska
Kornelia Kędziora-Kornatowska