Many people who take cholesterol-lowering statins notice that the drug makes them forgetful and fuzzy-brained. For instance, they might have more trouble remembering names or balancing their checkbooks than they used to. Doctors often either dismiss patients’ concerns as a coincidental sign of aging that’s unrelated to the drug…or they shrug their shoulders and say they have no idea why it happens.
Well, that’s about to change. Thanks to an accidental discovery at an Arizona lab, we now have an explanation for what’s behind the brain fog.
Researchers were actually searching for ways to help people with autism and other cognitive impairments. To that end, they were exposing mutant nerve cells from fruit flies to 1,040 different medications, one at a time, to see whether any of the drugs would reduce the damaging effect of the genetic defect on the cells.
To their surprise, the scientists discovered that four particular medications, and only four, caused the same kind of dramatic and obvious swelling within the nerve cells. It turned out that all four medications were statins—atorvastatin (Lipitor), lovastatin (Mevacor), rosuvastatin (Crestor) and pravastatin (Pravachol). The researchers dubbed the unique statin-induced swelling the beads-on-a-string effect because that’s exactly what it looked like under a microscope.
Researchers also noted that the beadlike swelling interrupted the flow of information along the nerve cells, so that the cells could not grow branches properly. However, when the statins were removed so that the nerve cells were no longer exposed, the beadlike bulges disappeared…and the cells quickly returned to normal growth!
This phenomenon may explain why many statin users develop cognitive problems. The statin-induced swelling could interrupt the “traffic” inside the branches of the nerve cells, slowing down or otherwise impacting thinking, judgment and behavior. And if the swelling subsides once the drugs are gone, it may explain why those memory problems typically go away when people stop taking statins.
This research, though enlightening, doesn’t give all the answers. We still don’t know whether statins other than the four tested also create the beads-on-a-string swelling problem…how statin dosage might affect the severity of this side effect…how quickly the beadlike swelling (or a more subtle version of it) might develop in an actual human being instead of in cells in a lab…and how long a person would have to be off the drugs for the swelling to go away. We also don’t know why some statin users get that fuzzy-brain feeling while others don’t, though genetics could play a role as it does for the muscle problems that some statin users experience. Stay tuned—future studies should provide additional insights, including info on who is and who isn’t susceptible to statin-induced memory problems.
Meanwhile, if your memory has worsened since you started taking statins, don’t let your doctor dismiss it as an “acceptable” price to pay for the drug’s cholesterol-lowering benefits…because it isn’t acceptable and you have other options. Talk with a nutrition-oriented or holistic physician about the dietary and lifestyle changes that could reduce your cholesterol levels—perhaps enough so that you’d be able to lower your statin dosage or stop taking the drug altogether. Considering how many other worrisome side effects are associated with statin use (such as an increased risk for diabetes, muscle damage, liver damage and digestive problems), this would be a welcome development for your brain and your body.
