Question: I am a lawyer, I am 58 years old and I take atorvastatin because I have high cholesterol. My body has been aching for some time now and I notice that it is more difficult for me to concentrate on my work and my memory fails more than usual. Could it be because of this remedy?
Federico P. Guiterri.
Lomas de zamora
Statins are a family of drugs widely used to lower cholesterol levels and
contribute significantly to reducing the risk of coronary heart disease.
Among the most used ones can be mentioned atorvastatin, simvastatin, rosuvastatin, pravastatin, lovastatin and fluvastatin.
They produce a significant decrease in total and LDL (or bad) cholesterol, a slight increase in HDL (or good) cholesterol and, with some statins, a reduction in triglycerides.
The extent of the changes will depend on which ones are used and the doses used.
Good and bad cholesterol.
Photo: Shutterstock.
In addition, they have other important actions: they stabilize atheromatous plaques inside the arteries,
they are anti-inflammatory, they reduce oxidative stress, they reduce the risk of thrombosis
by making the blood more fluid, and they protect the kidneys by protecting their arteries.
Its invaluable action in the immediate treatment, within 24 hours, of myocardial infarction should also be highlighted, since it
significantly reduces the risk of death:
in some statistics, the mortality of patients who did not receive any statin was more than three times higher. higher than that of those who did receive any of them.
For all these reasons, statins are widely used as treatment for cholesterol disorders and
the risk-benefit balance justifies their use.
Side effects
However, they are not without their adverse side effects.
The most common is that they produce minimal muscle injuries,
generating –in those who consume them– various muscle pains that can be very annoying.
For this reason, the doctor periodically controls the blood level of CPK, a substance that indicates whether or not the muscles are being injured.
Another side effect has also begun to be verified
: in a percentage of consumers certain brain functions are affected
, which are expressed with memory loss, difficulty thinking clearly and less learning capacity.
In most people taking statins the risk of these brain effects is low.
/ Photo: Pixabay.
Why would this happen?
Because the brain has a high concentration of cholesterol, which
is essential in the structural architecture of neuron membranes
and plays a decisive role in the connections between them, which are the basis of memory and learning.
Although experts agree that for most people taking statins the risk of these brain effects is low and reversible, they also agree that these actions are true and that a subgroup
of the population is vulnerable to them.
It is believed that due to genetic alterations, the group at risk are people with defects in mitochondria, tiny structures inside neurons and cells, responsible for generating energy for their normal functioning.
Statins are widely used as a treatment for cholesterol disorders and the risk-benefit balance justifies their use.
Norberto Abdala, psychiatrist
What has been described does not detract from the invaluable usefulness of statins,
much less that they are not consumed, but rather that both the doctor and the patient are attentive to these possible secondary brain effects and evaluate their eventual replacement.
Otherwise, these symptoms can be attributed to incipient Alzheimer's or similar diseases.
MS
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