In spite of earlier declarations, about one million people were studied and the results showed short-term memory loss is not caused by the statins.
“Detection bias “is the main cause of the high number of patients that were reported of short-term memory loss after taking statins in first 30 days.
482,542 patients using statins were compared with those 482,543 people who were not using any drugs for cholesterol; they were also compared with 26,484 people using statin free cholesterol controlling drugs. The short term memory loss was encountered among patients that were using statin.
However, the short term memory loss was reported in patients who were using statin as well as those patients using statin free cholesterol lowering drug. This concluded that, the short term memory loss is the effect of all the cholesterol lowering drugs. But this was highly unlikely to be because all of these drugs have different structures. Cholesterol lowering drugs do trigger the memory loss problem but this problem disappears over time.
It can also be said that the blames that are given to cholesterol lowering drugs actually belong to the “detection bias”. Brian L. Strom, chancellor of Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences said that, “When patients are put on statins or any new drug, they’re seen more often by their doctor, or they themselves are paying attention to whether anything is wrong.”
If the memory problem is noticed in the patient it is immediately seen by the doctor as the patient under statin is already under high observation. But the patients still put the blame on drugs they are given.
As a response to these events, a lot of doctors came up to the press and told them that the memory loss problem is not real and the people should not run away from statin. As a result of studies carried out by researchers it was shown that the long term use of statin has not been dangerous, though it has either improved the memories of its consumers or showed no effect at all.
