Cholesterol-lowering medicines are among the most widely used drugs for protecting heart health.
They are mainly prescribed to lower LDL cholesterol, often called “bad” cholesterol, because high levels can build up inside arteries and raise the risk of heart attack and stroke.
Statins are the best-known cholesterol drugs and include medicines such as atorvastatin, sold as Lipitor, and rosuvastatin, sold as Crestor.
They reduce cholesterol production in the liver and have strong evidence showing that they can prevent serious heart and blood vessel problems in people at increased risk.
Another group, called PCSK9 inhibitors, works in a different way. These newer medicines help the liver remove more LDL cholesterol from the blood and are often used when statins do not lower cholesterol enough or when a person cannot tolerate standard treatment.
However, researchers from the University of South Australia have found clues that cholesterol-lowering pathways may affect other parts of the body. Their findings suggest possible links with lung function, body fat, testosterone levels and the size of an important memory area in the brain.
The study was led by Kitty Pham from the Australian Centre for Precision Health at the University of South Australia. It was published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology in 2023 under the title “Genetically instrumented LDL-cholesterol lowering and multiple disease outcomes: A Mendelian randomization phenome-wide association study in the UK Biobank.”
The researchers studied genetic and health information from 337,475 people in the UK Biobank. Instead of giving participants cholesterol medicines and following them for many years, the team examined naturally occurring genetic differences that can mimic the effects of several ways of lowering LDL cholesterol.
This approach can help scientists look for possible long-term effects that would be difficult or expensive to study in a large clinical trial. However, genetic studies do not prove that taking a particular medicine will cause the same effect in every patient, so the results need to be tested in further research.
One finding involved the pathway targeted by PCSK9 inhibitors. Genetic evidence linked lower LDL cholesterol through this pathway with lower measures of lung function, raising questions about whether these medicines could have effects on breathing over the long term.
The researchers also found that genetic changes that mimic the action of statins were linked with a higher body mass index and more body fat, as well as lower testosterone. These findings do not mean that everyone who takes a statin will gain weight or experience hormone changes, but they highlight areas that scientists may want to study more closely.
There was also an unexpected finding involving the brain. The statin-related genetic pathway was associated with a larger hippocampus, a brain region that plays an important role in learning, memory and emotions.
Changes in the hippocampus have been studied in conditions such as dementia and depression. Still, a larger hippocampus in this genetic study does not automatically mean that statins prevent these conditions, and more research is needed to understand what the finding means for patients.
The study is important because cholesterol medicines can prevent heart attacks, strokes and other serious cardiovascular problems. For most people who need them, those proven benefits remain central when doctors weigh the advantages and possible risks of treatment.
People taking cholesterol-lowering medicine should not stop it because of these findings. Anyone who is worried about weight changes, breathing problems or other possible side effects should speak with a doctor, who can review the medicine, dose and individual health risks.
Research like this may eventually help doctors choose cholesterol treatments more precisely for different patients. For now, the findings offer new clues about how medicines designed to protect the heart may also have effects elsewhere in the body.
If you care about heart disease, please read studies that herbal supplements could harm your heart rhythm, and how eating eggs can help reduce heart disease risk.
For more health information, please see recent studies that apple juice could benefit your heart health, and results showing yogurt may help lower the death risks in heart disease.
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