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Statins and Cognitive Function: an Updated Review

  • Ischemic Heart Disease (D Mukherjee, Section Editor)
  • Published:
Current Cardiology Reports Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Ischemic heart disease remains the leading cause of death in the USA. Statins have substantially contributed to the decline in mortality due to heart disease. Historically, statins are hypothesized to be neuroprotective and beneficial in dementia, but recent reports have suggested an association with transient cognitive decline. We have critically appraised the relationship between statins and cognitive function in this review. Most of the data are observational and reported a protective effect of statins on dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in patients with normal cognition at baseline. Few studies, including two randomized control trials, were unable to find a statistically significant decrease in the risk or improvement in patients with established dementia or decline in cognitive function with statin use. As more randomized control trials are required to definitively settle this, cardiovascular benefits of statins must be weighed against the risks of cognitive decline on an individual basis.

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Conflict of Interest

Saurav Chatterjee, Parasuram Krishnamoorthy, Pragya Ranjan, Ahana Roy, Anasua Chakraborty, Manpreet Singh Sabharwal, Richard Ro, Vikram Agarwal, Partha Sardar, Jacqueline Danik, Jay S Giri, Emil M DeGoma, and Dharam J Kumbhani declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Cardiovascular Diseases, St. Luke’s—Roosevelt Hospital Center of the Mount Sinai Health System, 1111 Amsterdam Avenue Clark Building, 3rd floor, New York, NY, 10025, USA

    Saurav Chatterjee, Pragya Ranjan, Manpreet Singh Sabharwal, Richard Ro, Vikram Agarwal & Jacqueline Danik

  2. Department of Medicine, Englewood Medical Center, New Jersey, NJ, USA

    Parasuram Krishnamoorthy

  3. Yale New Haven Hospital—St Raphael Campus, New Haven, CT, USA

    Ahana Roy

  4. Division of Pulmonary Medicine and Critical Care, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Anasua Chakraborty

  5. Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, El Paso, TX, USA

    Partha Sardar

  6. Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

    Jacqueline Danik

  7. Division of Cardiovascular Diseases, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Jay S. Giri & Emil M. DeGoma

  8. Division of Cardiology, University of Texas Southwestern, Dallas, TX, USA

    Dharam J. Kumbhani

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  1. Saurav Chatterjee
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Correspondence to Saurav Chatterjee.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Ischemic Heart Disease

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Chatterjee, S., Krishnamoorthy, P., Ranjan, P. et al. Statins and Cognitive Function: an Updated Review. Curr Cardiol Rep 17, 4 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11886-014-0559-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11886-014-0559-3

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