20mg Lovastatin causing Parkinson's Disease in 1 year
 

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). **

20 mg lovastatin
 

correction in my first sentence, it was 20mg lovastatin. In 2017 researchers at penn state discovered that it was fat soluble statins like zocor, lipitor, and mevacor that were causing dramatic increases in parkinson's disease. I cannot include the link because you must have 10 posts to include a link. Go to pubmed and search on 28370314 to see the penn state study.

Hi Nancy

Welcome to NeuroTalk :).

Parkinson's Disease is a very complex condition. If you are curious about possible associations between it and statins you could do PubMed search (there is a link to PubMed at the top of all NT pages). When I did this I retrieved 120 papers. The most recent of them suggest that statin use is associated with a decreased risk of PD.

There are a number of threads on NT where negative effects of statin use have been discussed. You could use the Search command (https://www.neurotalk.org/search.php) to find them; they could also help you.

Best wishes.

Nancy, here is the link to the paper you mentioned.

Statins may facilitate Parkinson’s disease: Insight gained from a large, national claims database

Cholesterol low in most PWP
 

This is very interesting, because from what I have read, most PWP tend to be low in cholesterol and vitamin D (this is true for us and has always been the case, never ever had a cholesterol problem and tested on the low end).

I personally believe most drugs are over-scripted for many reasons, including profit and CYA (what doc wants to be sued for NOT prescribing a statin if the patient has a heart attack down the road?), so there are probably a lot of folks out there getting statins for whom a better therapy, or no therapy, might be better.

PD is complicated, but I think a big part of the complication comes from the fact that everything in our body is related and as the disease progresses, more and more parts of the body become affected and/or affected to another degree. If we could study very early diagnosed PWP and try serious nutritional interventions (like a keto diet, a paleo diet, etc.), we might be able to give the body what it needs to correct itself and get back on track. The longer the disease has been at play, the harder that is going to be, IMHO. One imbalance/nutritional deficiency leads to another one, which triggers yet another one, and so on, making it impossible to figure out and fix until we get to the original issue. It's like trying to control a flooding river when the dam upstream has burst and no one is fixing THAT.

And just to complicate things even more, every one is different, so what works for one PWP may not work as well or at all for another. But it would be a start. It can't be any worse than what we've been doing for the past 50+ years. Again just my .02.

There has also been mentions of possible other causes & factors..the main ones I recall are...
"Monsanto's Round up" /chemicals
gut /intestine factors
There are maps with PD population locations that may connect with some environmental factors..

Our site search should find related posts on those.
https://www.neurotalk.org/search.php

Statins and PD
 

I have believed from the beginning of my hisband’s Diagnosis of PD in 2004, that his use of Lipitor was etiologic in his disease. There are innumerable threads I posted about this association on this forum. I just became very tired of ranting about it, so I gave up. Though the posts remain.
I think there are also postings listing supplements that may help; CoEnzyme Q 10 is a major one.
Research Xuemei Huang, MD, and cholesterol, statins and PD.
Best of luck to you and your mom.

Statins and Parkinson's
 

Dear Nancy Rockwell,

I have been convinced for years that simvastatin triggered my husband's descent into Parkinson's disease. He was prescribed simvastatin for no good reason that I can see; stable cardiac condition, cholesterol not elevated at all. He was placed on this drug in about 2006. After one year on the drug, his cardiologist instructed him to add CoQ10 to his regimen "to protect against statin side effects". He continued on simvastatin with CoQ10 for another 3 years. In 2009 he retired from work, moved with me back to his home country, and started to develop a farm. He already had increased symptoms of memory loss and slow and jerky movements. In 2009 I asked him to stop the statin drug, and he did. His cardiologist had suggested prior to his retirement that he could stop it upon retirement.

Reading the above stories just makes me sick. I've been a loud protester of statins for years and have been preaching about so many other issues like dementia and alzheimers but the P.D. The damage done by so many pharma drugs, disgusting.

And yet there is a lot of info on the myth of cholesterol in the first place. People just can't believe this as docs and pharma have pushed the fear button loud and hard.

After being put on Vytorin to lower my cholesterol, which is a combination of Zetia and simvastatin(Zocor), I started experiencing foot shaking/tremors within a year or two of use if I remember the time frame correctly. I was diagnosed with PD about a year later and have always thought it was not a coincidence. When I mentioned it to my newer primary care physician he basically thought it highly unlikely; maybe due to those early studies of statins decreasing the chances of PD.

Eric