Statins and memory loss: An Australian experience

Statins are a first-line drug treatment for hypercholesterolaemia. Recently there has been general public and media interest surrounding uses and side effects of statins, including memory loss.

We analysed an Australian experience in statin usage in an attempt to improve understanding of the relationship between statins and memory-related adverse events.

Total adverse events (TAE) and adverse events with single suspected medicines (SSM) for memory loss and other memory-related adverse events were searched for statin compounds from January 1992 to May 2013, using the Medicare Australia and Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) websites and Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) adverse events data. TAE and SSM were compared to the number of prescriptions by item number searched using the PBS. The process was repeated for non-statin cholesterol-lowering drugs.

The most common adverse event was amnesia (167 events for statins and six for non-statins). There were 239 TAE (incidence rate=0.88) listed for statins and 10 for non-statins (incidence rate=0.53). There were 217 SSM events listed for the statins (incidence rate = 0.08) and eight for the alternatives (incident rate=0.04). The differences between TAE and SSM incidence rates between statins and non-statins drugs were not significant (both p values >0.05).

We found that there were no differences in memory-related adverse events between statins and other cholesterol-lowering medications using Australian PBS and TGA adverse events data.