Statins and Alzheimer — current stand and further development directions

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.