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Senior Citizen Health & Medicine
Statins Keep Old Lungs Young, Reducing Loss of
Function Even in Elderly Smokers
Good for lowering cholesterol, maybe as dementia
fighter, statins gain in reputation
 Oct. 12, 2007 - Statins taken my millions of senior
citizens for lowering cholesterol and maybe even fighting dementia, now
have another reported benefit: they appear to slow decline in lung
function in the elderly - even in those who smoke. According to
researchers in Boston, it may be statins anti-inflammatory and
antioxidant properties that help achieve this effect.
Their findings were published in the second issue
for October in the American Thoracic Societys American Journal of
Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
We hypothesized that statins would have a
protective effect on decline in lung function, wrote Dr. Joel Schwartz,
Ph.D., professor of environmental epidemiology at Harvard School of
Public Health, a lead researcher on the study, the first to examine the
relationships between statins and lung function decline.
The link between lung function and mortality and
the reduced levels of lung function in the elderly indicates the
importance of a possibility of reducing the rate of decline, wrote Dr.
Schwartz.
To investigate whether statins had an effect of
loss of lung function, the researchers used data from the ongoing and
longitudinal Veterans Administration Normative Aging Study, which began
in 1963. They analyzed 803 subjects who had had their lung function
measured at least twice between January 1995 and June 2005. Both forced
expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) and forced vital capacity (FVC)
were measured. The study subjects also completed questionnaires on
pulmonary disorders, smoking and medication usage.
The investigators found that subjects taking
statins experienced a markedly slower annual decline in lung function.
In FEV1, statin users lost 10.9 ml on average, whereas nonusers lost an
average of 23.9 ml each yearmore than twice that of the statin group.
Similarly, statin users lost an average of 14 ml a year in FVC, whereas
nonusers lost an average of 36.2 ml.
To determine whether smoking status modified that
effect, the researchers also divided their subjects into four smoking
groups: never-smokers, long-ago quitters, recent quitters and current
smokers. Within each smoking group, those not taking statins were
estimated to experience faster declines in FEV1 and FVC than those
taking statins, wrote Dr. Schwartz, noting that the size of the effect
varied a bit with smoking status.
Our results suggest (weakly) that long-term
quitters and recent quitters may be able to benefit more from statin use
than other groups, Dr. Schwartz wrote.
But because of overlap between groups and the lack
of randomization and controls in this study, the researchers point out
that further data is needed before any definitive conclusions are drawn.
Their findings do, however, support the hypothesis that statins reduce
the annual loss of lung function that occurs with age.
The researchers suggest that the observed effect
may be attributable to statins ability to reduce inflammation and
smoking-induced injury in the lung, as well as their capacity to reduce
serum levels of C-reactive protein, which relates to systemic
inflammation, and to protect against oxidative damage.
The research adds to a growing body of knowledge
indicating the positive effects of statin use beyond its cholesterol
lowering properties, according to the scientists.
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