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SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article

Front. Pharmacol.
Sec. Neuropharmacology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphar.2025.1473796

The Role of Statins in Dementia or Alzheimer's Disease Incidence: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Cohort Studies

Provisionally accepted
Ye Du Ye Du 1Zhangjie Yu Zhangjie Yu 1Chengyi Li Chengyi Li 2Yanxing Zhang Yanxing Zhang 3Buyun Xu Buyun Xu 4*
  • 1 Department of Neurology, Shaoxing People's Hospital, Shaoxing, China
  • 2 School of Medicine, Shaoxing University, Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, China
  • 3 Shaoxing People's Hospital, Shaoxing, China
  • 4 Department of Cardiology, Shaoxing People's Hospital, Shaoxing, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Background: The effect of statins on the risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease (AD) is unclear. Methods: We systematically searched EMBASE, Web of Science, PubMed, CENTRAL and ClinicalTrail.gov for cohort studies comparing incidence of new-onset dementia and AD between statin users and non-users. We applied the DerSimonian-Laird random effects method to pool hazard ratio (HR) with 95 % confidence intervals (CI). Results: We included forty-two studies comprising 6,325,740 patients. Thirty-five cohort studies involving 6,306,043 participants were pooled and indicated that statin use was associated with a reduced risk of dementia (HR: 0.79, 95%CI: 0.71-0.88). Similarly, an analysis of 19 studies comprising 1,237,341 participants demonstrated a 29% decrease in the risk of AD among statin users (HR: 0.71, 95% CI: 0.60-0.85). In sensitivity analyses, diagnostic criteria for dementia/AD significantly affected the combined risk estimates. In subgroup analyses, compared to studies enrolling participants with a mean/median age over 70 years, those younger than 70 years exhibited greater efficacy of statins in preventing dementia (HR: 0.67, 95% CI: 0.56-0.81 vs. HR: 0.86, 95% CI: 0.78-0.95; P = 0.02) and AD (HR: 0.47, 95% CI: 0.44-0.50 vs. HR: 0.81, 95% CI: 0.71-0.92; P < 0.01). Due to significant heterogeneity in the definitions of statin dosage and exposure duration, pooling the results was abandoned and most studies suggested that higher dosages and longer exposure duration of statins further reduce the risk of dementia and AD. Conclusion: Statin use is associated with a reduced incidence of dementia and AD, which might be modified by ages.

    Keywords: Alzheimer's disease, cohort study, Dementia, statin, Meta-analysis

    Received: 02 Aug 2024; Accepted: 10 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Du, Yu, Li, Zhang and Xu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Buyun Xu, Department of Cardiology, Shaoxing People's Hospital, Shaoxing, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.