Statins could protect against motor neurone disease

High cholesterol has been found to be a possible risk factor for the development of motor neurone disease (MND), according to genetic datasets of around 25 million people, including more than 337,000 people from the UK Biobank.

This research was led by Queen Mary University of London, in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health in the USA and published in the journal Annals of Neurology. The results suggest that cholesterol-lowering drugs, such as statins, could be used to prevent the onset of MND, if confirmed in clinical trials.

"This is the largest study to-date looking at causal risk factors for motor neurone disease and we saw that higher levels of LDL cholesterol were causally linked with a greater risk of the disease. We have well-established drugs that can lower cholesterol and we should look into whether they could protect against this terrible disease, which currently has no cure."

Dr Alastair Noyce from Queen Mary University of London

MND or Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal neurodegenerative disease for which there is no cure. It affects up to 5,000 adults in the UK at any one time, and the global prevalence is projected to nearly double by 2040, primarily due to ageing of the global population.

In addition to the causal effect of high cholesterol, they also found genetic associations with smoking behaviour and lower levels of educational achievement, and an increased risk of ALS. While low levels of exercise were associated with a protective effect, more aggressive exercise was associated with increased risk. However, of these findings, only high cholesterol emerged as a clear modifiable factor that could be targeted to reduce risk of MND.

The research was carried out at Queen Mary’s Preventive Neurology Unit, which has been funded by Barts Charity.

The study is limited in that the data are focused on European populations, so the findings may not apply beyond those populations.