Alzheimer's Drugs May Protect Against Heart Attacks and Death

Drugs used to treat early-stage Alzheimer’s may serve a second beneficial role by reducing a patients’ risk of heart attack and death, according to a study published in European Heart Journal.

In all, the researchers examined 7,000 patients living with the degenerative disease in Sweden over the course of three years.

During that time period, those taking the drugs known as cholinesterase inhibitors, or ChEIs, had a 38 percent lower risk of experiencing a heart attack and a 26 percent lower risk of dying due to cardiovascular causes, including stroke.

Furthermore, the size of the dose of the medication appeared to make a difference as well, with patients on the highest dose experiencing the lowest risk of a heart attack or death when compared to those who had never taken them.

This was true in case-control cohorts matched for potential confounders, including age, gender and cognitive function, among other things.

“If you translate these reductions in risk into absolute figures, it means that for every 100,000 people with Alzheimer’s disease, there would be 180 fewer heart attacks (295 as opposed to 475) and 1,125 fewer deaths from all causes (2,000 versus 3,125) every year among those taking ChEIs compared to those not using them,” study author Professor Peter Nordstrom, of Umea University in Sweden, said in a journal news release, according to Health.com.

The study, Nordstrom added, likely marks the first to like the use of ChEIs to reduced risk of heart attack and death from cardiovascular disease.

Ultimately, however, the link is only one of correlation at this point, and not causation.

“As this is an observational study, we cannot say that ChEI use is causing the reduction in risk, only that it is associated with a reduction,” he said. “However, the strengths of the associations make them very interesting from the clinical point of view, although no clinical recommendations should be made on the basis of the results from our study.”