The story of statins

Everyone has heard of cholesterol, the fat molecule that bungs up arteries and causes heart attacks. For years health experts have enjoined us to avoid food that contains it. The pharmaceutical industry, never long in spotting an opportunity, invented drugs in the 1980s that block cholesterol metabolism. Those drugs are called statins and are currently the most prescribed pharmaceuticals by volume in the world. So far, so conventional. What no one saw coming when the spotlight was on cholesterol is that statins are also anti-inflammatories. Their ability to keep people alive – which is considerable - by fending off heart attacks (and strokes) is as much to do with stabilising harmful inflammation as it is to do with lowering cholesterol levels.  So much so, that they are now respectable options, at least in the testing stage, for conditions that have everything to do with inflammation but nothing to do with cholesterol. Like depression, for instance. Depression is a common and often debilitating condition which was once blamed on an insufficiency of ‘happy’ chemicals in the brain. Today it is seen as one of the many conditions – like heart disease, cancer, and dementia – which happen because there is too much inflammation floating around. Even if you haven’t had depression, you know the phenomenon. It is like the lethargy you feel when you have the flu. That too comes from inflammatory molecules pinging on your brain. Studies show that statins alleviate depression. They are also being investigated for treating gum inflammation, Parkinson’s disease and asthma (via inhalers), among other things. Inflammation underpins many things and a healthy immune balance is key to staying healthy for a long time.