In other news: Protein may hold Alzheimer's key, and the many health benefits of vitamin B.
Millions of Americans use statins to lower their cholesterol, but the drugs have been linked to a host of side effects ranging from muscle pain to liver damage and diabetes. A new study in the journal JAMA Ophthalmology now adds cataracts, a leading cause of blindness, to the list of potential risks.
Researchers from the San Antonio Military Medical Center in Texas looked at data on 46,249 patients, more than 13,000 of whom used statins regularly for at least 90 days, and found that those who took the drugs were approximately 40 percent more likely to develop cataracts
“Weighing the benefit-risk ratio of statin use, specifically for primary prevention, should be carefully considered,” the researchers wrote in the study.
But John Higgins, MD, Chief of Cardiology at Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital in Houston, cautions that previous studies have come to very different conclusions. “There are a number of small studies, such as this one, that show that statin use can raise the risk for cataracts, but much larger studies don’t show the same association,” said Dr. Higgins. “There may be some particular people who are at a higher risk for cataracts when it comes to statin, but that’s not generally the case.”
Recent research presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress looked at data on more than 2 million patients who took statins for nearly five years and found, contrary to the new study, that statin use actually resulted in a 50 percent reduction in risk for cataracts.
Protein May Hold Key to Beta-Amyloid’s Role in Alzheimer’s
New research out of Stanford University suggests that a specific class of proteins may be responsible for making the protein beta-amyloid toxic to the brain, triggering the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. The study, published in Science, comes on the heels of an announcement that the National Institutes of Health will invest $45 million in Alzheimer’s research and the release of the World Alzheimer Report 2013.
Researchers have long tried to understand the relationship between beta-amyloid and Alzheimer’s disease. While the buildup of beta-amyloid plaques has been linked to the disease, not everyone with a higher level of the protein develops Alzheimer’s. “Something else must be present to allow the amyloid to have neurotoxic effect,” said Richard Lipton, MD, professor and vice chair of neurology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
The researchers built off of previous work they had done on a protein found in mice, PirB. Previously, this protein was thought to only exist in the immune system, where it binds to T-cells, but they realized it also appears in the brain, explained study author Carla Shatz, PhD, professor of neurobiology and biology at Stanford. When the protein was knocked out in mice models, the researchers realized the brain exhibited higher plasticity, which is essentially the opposite of Alzheimer’s disease. The researchers theorized that beta amyloids may be binding to PirB, which made PirB even stronger, and reduced plasticity at an even faster rate, causing the mental decline exhibited in Alzheimer’s.
An analogous protein, LilrB2, is found in humans. This protein could be the target of a new drug therapy that could block it, which would hopefully prevent beta-amyloid from becoming toxic in the brain.
Straight A’s For Vitamin B
Vitamin B is linked to many health benefits including improved metabolism, healthy skin and hair and, according to a recent study, a lower risk of stroke. But vitamin B isn’t a single vitamin.
Find out about the different B vitamins, natural sources to include in your diet, what daily doses you need, and what benefits each can offer.
