A study is set to examine whether statins, usually used to reduce cholesterol, could help people with motor neurone disease (MND) live longer.
There is no cure for MND, which causes muscle weakness, can lead people to lose the ability to walk and gets worse over time. People with the progressive neurodegenerative disease usually die within three to five years after diagnosis.
But researchers will now look at whether repurposing other drugs could give people with MND longer lives.
It comes after academics, led by experts at Stanford University in the US, examined medical records of American veterans diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) – one of the main forms of MND.
They analysed data on the medical records of 11,003 veterans between 2009 and 2019 and found that people who had been prescribed certain medications appeared to live longer. Some 18 medications taken for other conditions were linked with prolonged survival.
These included statins, prescribed to treat high cholesterol, and alpha blockers, also known as alpha adrenergic receptor antagonists, which are prescribed to improve urine flow in men with enlarged prostates.
“To our knowledge, this is the largest study to identify new ALS treatment candidates through drug repurposing and the first to be based on electronic health records,” the authors wrote in the Lancet Digital Health journal.
Lead author Professor Richard Reimer, from Stanford University School of Medicine, said: “Currently there are no truly effective treatments for ALS and people with the disease only live between three and five years after they have been diagnosed.
“Developing treatments for ALS has been difficult and disappointing because we don’t understand the disease completely and it is difficult to study in the clinic.
“Our findings suggest that treatment with statins and alpha blockers might prolong survival for individuals with ALS.
“Both statins and alpha blockers are generally well tolerated and available in inexpensive generic forms.”
He added: “The next steps will be determining why these associations exist and who may benefit from the treatments.
“For example, are statins affecting ALS survival by lowering cholesterol? Are they only helpful to individuals with elevated cholesterol?
“Once there is a better understanding of the link between these medications and survival for people with ALS, we hope that formal placebo controlled trials will confirm their benefit.”
