Ozarks Local, page 7:
Section: Assorted
("Lipitor" from page 1)
More evidence on the cholesterol theory will be presented later this month at the International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders in Stockholm, Thies says.
In addition, he says, researchers will present findings suggesting that people who take steps to reduce their risk of heart disease, such as eating a healthy diet or reducing blood pressure, can reduce their risk of Alzheimer's.
In the 1980s, Sparks noticed that people who had died of heart disease had deposits in their brain that looked surprisingly like the senile plaque of Alzheimer's disease.
Sparks knew those people had clogged arteries or atherosclerotic plaque caused by too much cholesterol in the blood. He wondered whether that excess cholesterol also caused a different kind of plaque in the brain.
He did a laboratory study in which he fed rabbits a high-fat, high-cholesterol diet. After eight weeks, he found brain deposits that looked just like the beginnings of Alzheimer's disease.
Results from those studies and others began to jell into a new theory. The evidence suggested that too much cholesterol in the blood somehow got brain cells to dump a toxic protein called beta amyloid. Outside the brain cell, that protein began to clump together to form the senile plaque.
Sparks began to think about testing that theory.
"We've got cholesterol-lowering drugs approved by the FDA, and they're safe," he reasoned. "Let's see if they help treat Alzheimer's."
Sparks did that by giving Lipitor to about 100 men and women with the earliest stages of Alzheimer's. The findings from that study, which was funded in part by Pfizer, the company that makes Lipitor, won't be in for another year, he says.
Lipitor is one of five statin drugs on the market today; Pravachol, Lescol, Zocor and Mevacor are the others.
New research suggests the statin drugs may also prevent Alzheimer's from developing.
Despite such concerns, Thies and others encourage people who already have Alzheimer's disease to consider volunteering for a study of such drugs.
For Maurine Longstreth and her 78-year-old husband, Harold, of Sun City, Ariz., the unknown risks had to be weighed against a race with time.
He's in the early stage of Alzheimer's and has been taking Lipitor for about a year.
Maurine describes the day-to-day progression of the disease: Harold forgets what he had for breakfast. He has forgotten key moments from their past. And he has gotten lost coming home from the doctor's office.”
I am hoping," she says, "that Lipitor has slowed things down." © USA Today
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