In 1990 at age 54 my mother was prescribed 10mg Lovastatin (Mevacor) for slightly elevtated cholesterol. She had no symptoms of heart disease, there is no familial hypercholesterolemia in her family. Her mother lived until age 92, her father until 79.
In 1991 my mother developed a tremor in her leg. In 1992 she was diagnosed with parkinson's disease. Her neurologist did not research the Lovastatin to see if it was fat soluble (lipophilic) which crosses the blood brain barrier and reduces cholesterol in the brain. The brain is 25 to 30% cholesterol. If you reduce cholesterol in the brain, the brain atrophies. In May 1995, Dr Thomas Muller a neurologist from Berlin, published a case study in The Annals of Neurology documenting two patients who took 20mg of Lovastatin which caused parkinson's disease in these patients. This is the same dosage that my mother took. Her neurologist either failed to read this study, or ignored it because he wanted to continue to prescribe my mother sinemet and other medications to receive fees from the pharmaceutical firms. He never told my mother to stop the Lovastatin and start a high ratio ketogenic diet to raise her LDL cholesterol levels, which may have undone the damage to her brain from the Lovastatin. I am looking for other patients that developed PD within 2.5 years of being prescribed a fat soluble statin (Zocor, Lipitor, Mevacor, etc). **