The cholesterol-lowering meds failed to prevent or delay the progression of Alzheimer’s, or create any change in cognition, according to the study published this week in Neurology.

The researchers examined 929 Catholic clergy members who were, on average, 75 years old, free of dementia at the beginning of the study and enrolled in a convent. All of the participants agreed to a brain autopsy at the time of their death and underwent annual cognitive tests for up to 12 years, beginning in 1994. At the beginning of the study, 119 people were taking one of the various statins. During the 12-year follow-up period, 191 people developed Alzheimer’s disease, of whom 16 used statins at the start of the study, which was funded by the National Institute on Aging.

“Some studies have suggested people taking statins are less likely to have Alzheimer’s disease, but we didn’t find any relation between statin use and Alzheimer’s,” Zoe Arvanitakis, an associate professor of neurological sciences at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, tells Pharmalot. “There was also no association between statins and a slower cognitive decline among older people.”

The researchers performed brain autopsies on more than 250 people who died during the study to examine the relation of statins to Alzheimer’s disease pathology and stroke in the brain, the two common pathological causes of dementia. The study found statin use at any time during the course of the study had no effect on pathology of Alzheimer’s disease or strokes, according to the researchers. This is the paper.

One caveat: Arvanitakis says the study is limited in that there were relatively few statin users among those who died. And no one statin was used by a particularly large group within the overall number of participants to offer insights into the different statins. She says future studies will need to look at the possibility of associations of statins with other pathologic changes of Alzheimer’s disease not examined in this study.