Lipitor And Memory Loss

Anstatin or "statin" drugs are among the most popular pharmaceutical products in the world. This is no surprise: in a world obsessed with living longer and healthier, cholesterol-related heart disease remains one of mankind's largest killers. Lipitor–-one of the most popular of the statin drugs (with over $10.4 billion in sales in 2004)–-has been proven to reduce the levels of LDL cholesterol in users.

One thing, of course, to keep in mind is that although extremely high levels of LDL cholesterol are quite bad for you, a certain amount is actually healthy. As with many organic chemicals, too little can be as dangerous, at times, as too much. Trying to "eradicate" cholesterol will end up doing more harm than good, even with the most conscientious patients.

This and other concerns have caused many people to begin wondering about the possible side effects of Lipitor. In particular, certain parties have voiced the complaint that Lipitor can cause not only physical complications, but physiological ones as well. An example of this is increased memory loss.

It's difficult to find definite information on this side effect. The FDA has approved Lipitor for private use, meaning that any excessively harmful side effects it might have are mostly conjectural and generally not admitted to be really tenable by the manufacturers. This has not stopped the accusations from developing, however. The problem is, since Lipitor is such a new drug–-and because many of its users fall into the above-50 year old category that is normally prone to memory loss--these reports have been difficult to substantiate.