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Ludwig Cancer Research team have found a single protein that is produced at high levels by cancer cells across a wide spectrum of malignancies. In animal models of cancer, this protein builds a complex barrier to anti-cancer immune responses, shielding tumours from immune identification and killing.

The study, led by Douglas Hanahan of Ludwig Lausanne, Qiqun Zeng and Sadegh Saghafinia, both former members of his lab, and graduate student Agnieszka Chryplewicz, also outlines a signature of gene expression induced by the protein, known as FMRP, that encompasses 156 different genes and predicts poor patient survival in a variety of cancer types.

The findings, published in the journal Science, might help guide the selection of patients who will benefit from immunotherapies and the development of novel medicines for a variety of cancers in the future.

“Our study has detailed a previously unknown and apparently common mechanism by which malignant cells shut down anti-cancer immune responses,” said Hanahan, a distinguished scholar at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research Lausanne Branch.

“We have shown that the hyperexpression of FMRP, which we and others have previously linked to tumour progression, doesn’t directly drive cancer cell proliferation and tumour growth. Rather, it supports the ability of malignant cells to manipulate the types and functional states of immune cells around them in a manner that very effectively subverts immune attack.”

Fragile X syndrome, a neurodevelopmental disorder that causes severe intellectual impairment, has been related to FMRP, a protein that is mostly synthesised in neurons and is being studied as a possible risk factor. FMRP is a protein that controls gene-to-protein translation and assists in the stabilisation of messenger RNA readouts in cells. However, its role in the genesis of cancer remained unclear.

The researchers began by establishing that greater FMRP levels may be seen in a range of tumour types. In order to examine the role of FMRP in cancer, they employed CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing to eliminate FMR1, the gene that encodes FMRP, from mouse cancer cell lines.

They constructed mouse models of pancreatic, colon, melanoma, and breast tumours using the changed cell lines and compared them to equivalent tumours that retained their FMR1 genes using animals with or without intact immune systems.

All tumours expanded evenly in culture and in immunocompromised animals, but those missing the FMR1 gene grew at a significantly slower rate in mice with functional immune systems. They were also densely packed with cytotoxic and helper T cells, both of which are critical for the immune system’s capacity to combat cancer. Tumors with intact FMR1 genes, on the other hand, progressed swiftly and lacked anti-tumor T cells, gaining the term “immune deserts.”

When T cells were removed from FMR1-deficient tumours, they stopped growing, demonstrating that FMRP promotes tumour growth via modulating the immune response.

The FMRP-regulated gene-expression pathway in cancer cells activates a range of immune evasion-supporting defence mechanisms, according to the researchers.

One of these is the release of substances that, among other things, promote the induction of regulatory T cells, inhibit the activity of cytotoxic T cells, or rewire immune cells known as macrophages so that they support the growth and survival of cancer cells rather than destroying them, primarily through the pacification of T cells.

The lack of FMRP in cancer cells, on the other hand, resulted in the reversal of their immunosuppressive effects as well as the production of a chemical that attracts T lymphocytes.

The FMRP-deficient cancer cells also produced signals that instructed tumor-infiltrating macrophages to engage in a stimulatory programme that aided in the recruitment and activation of T cells capable of eliminating the tumour.
Despite the fact that FMRP expression alone is not a good predictive biomarker for cancer outcomes, the researchers reveal that a gene expression profile representing the regulatory network it produces accurately predicts relatively low survival probabilities in a range of cancer types.

“We are hopeful that these discoveries can be translated into diagnostics and therapies of benefit to cancer patients, as the hallmark capability of cancers to circumvent immune responses underlies the resistance of many tumour types to immunotherapy,” said Hanahan.

To that end, the researchers founded Opna Bio, which is researching cancer therapies that target FMRP and the mechanisms via which it works

Family engagement in psychosis therapy enhances patient outcomes, according to new research from Boston Medical Center. Several studies have found that learning to use motivational interviewing communication methods can help caregivers reduce conflict and expressed emotion while also boosting treatment adherence.

The findings were reported in ScienceDirect. According to research, relatives who understand the nature of psychosis symptoms and remedies can help with treatment adherence by helping with responsibilities like arranging and driving to appointments, filling medications, and talking with doctors about worrying symptoms or behaviours.

The goal is not for the caregiver to become a therapist to the person with psychosis, but rather for them to learn and use motivational interviewing-based communication strategies to reduce expressed emotion and play a more effective role in connecting the person with psychosis to relevant clinical services.

“With the findings from this study, our hope is to understand how supportive home environments can improve patient outcomes across diagnoses,” said Emily R. Kline, MD, Director of Psychological Services in the Wellness and Recovery After Psychosis Program at Boston Medical Center and associate professor of psychiatry at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine.

The study is a pilot randomised controlled trial that looks at the impact of Motivational Interviewing for Loved Ones (MILO), a brief five-hour psychoeducational intervention for carers, on a group of family members of people with early-stage psychosis. Caregivers were randomly assigned to either immediate motivational interviewing for loved ones or a six-week waiting control condition using a randomised crossover design; all participants eventually got the intervention.

The findings of this study revealed that caregiver participants improved significantly in caregiver wellbeing, caregiver self-efficacy, family conflict, and expressive emotion. There was no change in caregiver-reported patient treatment adherence over time. MILO had a substantial effect on family conflict and expressed emotion, a modest effect on felt stress, and no effect on parental self-efficacy or treatment adherence as compared to the waitlist. Interventions that include and counsel family members, according to researchers, may enhance patient outcomes by fostering a less stressful and more supportive home environment.

Researchers at Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet have discovered the bacteria most commonly seen in severe oral infections. There haven’t been many studies like this one, so the researchers are hopeful that it can offer more insight on the association between oral bacteria and other illnesses. The study was published in Microbiology Spectrum.

Previous study has found clear links between oral health and common diseases such as diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and Alzheimer’s disease. However, few long-term studies have been undertaken to identify the exact bacteria prevalent in diseased oral- and maxillofacial regions.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet found the most common bacteria after analysing samples obtained from patients with serious oral infections at Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden between 2010 and 2020. The research groups of Professor Margaret Sallberg Chen and adjunct Professor Volkan Ozenci collaborated on this project.

“We’re reporting here, for the first time, the microbial composition of bacterial infections from samples collected over a ten-year period in Stockholm County,” says Professor Sallberg Chen of the Department of Dental Medicine at Karolinska Institutet. “The results show that several bacterial infections with link to systemic diseases are constantly present and some have even increased over the past decade in Stockholm.”

Involvement in other illnesses
Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Proteobacteria, and Actinobacteria were the most prevalent bacterial phyla found in the samples, whereas Streptococcus spp, Prevotella spp, and Staphylococcus spp were the most common genera.

“Our results provide new insight into the diversity and prevalence of harmful microbes in oral infections,” says Professor Sallberg Chen. “The finding isn’t only of importance to dental medicine, it also helps us understand the role of dental infection in patients with underlying diseases. If a certain bacterium infects and causes damage in the mouth, it’s very likely that it can be harmful to tissues elsewhere in the body as the infection spreads.”

The researchers have previously demonstrated that the presence of oral bacteria in the pancreas correlates with the severity of pancreatic tumours. The study included 1,014 samples from the same number of patients, 469 women and 545 men, using a mass-spectrometric technology called MALDI-TOF, which quickly detects individual live bacteria in a sample but is seldom used in dental care.

“Our study was a single centre epidemiology study and to ensure the validity of the results we need to make more and larger studies,” says Volkan Ozenci at the Department of Laboratory Medicine, Karolinska Institutet. “We now hope that dentists will collaborate with clinical microbiology laboratories more to gain a better understanding of the bacteria that cause dental infections, to improve diagnostics and therapeutic management of oral infections.”

According to a new study, organ donations and transplants have surged during huge motorcycle rallies. The findings were reported in the journal ‘JAMA Internal Medicine.’ The study found that during the seven major motorcycle rallies staged in the United States between 2005 and 2021, there were 21% more organ donors per day on average and 26% more transplant receivers per day on average, as compared to days shortly before and after the rallies.

Large-scale motorcycle rallies draw hundreds of thousands of people, and past research has indicated that these events are associated with an increase in severe injuries and deaths from motor vehicle accidents.
The current study sought to determine if these events were associated with increases in organ donation and transplantation in the locations where they were hosted.

The researchers asked if organ donations increased in tandem with trauma-related mortality. They did it. Was the quality of organs given affected by clinical or demographic disparities among donors during rallies? There wasn’t any.

“The spikes in organ donations and transplantations that we found in our analysis are disturbing, even if not entirely surprising, because they signal a systemic failure to avoid preventable deaths, which is a tragedy,” said study first author David Cron, HMS clinical fellow in surgery at Mass General. “There is a clear need for better safety protocols around such events.”

“At the same time, it is important for transplant communities in places where these events are held to be aware of the potential for increased organ donors during those periods. Organ donation is often called the gift of life, and we should make sure that we do not squander it and can turn any of these tragic deaths into a chance to potentially save other lives,” added Cron, who is also a research fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s Center for Surgery and Public Health, where he is part of a group interested in understanding how policy decisions and other factors, both inside and outside the health care system, affect efforts to improve the supply of organs for transplantation.

The researchers estimated changes in the incidence of donation and transplants in regions that hosted rallies using data from the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients for deceased organ donors aged 16 and older involved in a motor vehicle crash and recipients of organs from those donors from March 2005 to September 2021.

Researchers examined data from 10,798 organ donors and 35,329 receivers in the areas where the highlighted motorcycle rallies are held. During the rally days, there were 406 organ donors and 1,400 transplant patients in the surrounding areas. There were 2,332 organ donors and 7,714 transplant recipients in those regions during the four weeks preceding and after the rallies.

They compared rally dates to the days before and after the rallies. To rule out the effect of other factors unrelated to bike rallies, the researchers compared numbers from rally areas with other regions that were not influenced by the rallies, and then examined trends in rally regions at other times of the year.

They also analysed the donors’ demographic and clinical features, as well as the quality of organs donated during and after rallies. They discovered no statistically significant differences.

Whether there was a rally or not, key features of transplant recipients, such as how long they had been waiting for an organ and how bad their disease was at the time of transplant, were identical. The researchers concluded that the rise in the number of accessible organs was insufficient to alleviate the nation’s urgent shortage of donor organs, even if only temporarily.

Cron further stated that the data provided was insufficient to determine whether the donors died in motorcycle accidents or in passenger cars. Bike rallies are often enormous, packed events held in rural areas or tiny towns with traffic infrastructure designed for far smaller populations and significantly less traffic, according to the study. This implies that, in order to improve overall safety for all motorists and pedestrians, event organisers should focus on general traffic management in addition to advocating helmet use and safe motorcycle operating.

Over the course of many days, each of the seven motorcycle rallies in the study attracts more than 200,000 visitors. Daytona Bike Week in Florida and the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota each pull 500,000 people over a 10-day period.

There are several economic and personal benefits for the communities that host the rallies and the individuals who attend. Understanding all of an event’s potential implications, on the other hand, can help organisers and attendees prepare better in order to reduce the possibility of unpleasant “side effects,” according to the researchers.

The paper is the latest in a series examining the often-unanticipated effects of large-scale public events on the health system by senior author Anupam Jena, the Joseph P. Newhouse Professor of Health Care Policy in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS. His previous work in this area includes studies that found that firearm injuries decrease nationwide during NRA conventions, that high-risk patients with certain acute heart conditions are more likely to survive than other, similar patients if admitted to the hospital during national cardiology meetings, and that people who suffer heart attacks or cardiac arrests near a major marathon are more likely to die within a month due to d.

“Nothing in life is ever completely safe. Our priority should be to make risky events like motorcycle rallies as safe as they can be,” Jena said. “But it’s also critical to have a clear understanding of how these events impact the health of individuals and the health care systems that we all rely on so that we can give participants, event organizers, and policymakers the context and data they need to make smart choices.”

The outcomes of recent research on neurotechnological methods for treating teenage depression are encouraging. The study’s principal investigator, Faranak Farzan, a professor at Simon Fraser University (SFU), oversaw its publication in the Journal of Affective Disorders Reports.

The use of brain stimulation followed by a cognitive exercise to treat Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) in 26 teenagers was evaluated for its clinical and neurophysiological effects (aged 16 – 24 years old). Adult depression has previously been demonstrated to be quickly and effectively treated with theta-burst stimulation (TBS), a form of brain stimulation.

The prefrontal cortex of the brain is stimulated by magnetic pulses or bursts used in TBS. Many cognitive processes, including thinking, problem-solving, understanding, and impulse control, are controlled by this area of the brain. Additionally, it is a part of the brain that has been connected to MDD. For instance, prefrontal brain impairment has been connected to signs like rumination and suicide thoughts.

For four weeks, TBS was employed in this investigation to specifically target the prefrontal cortex in young volunteers. The researchers then saw and tracked alterations in brain activity using a multimodal brain mapping approach that combines electroencephalography and transcranial magnetic stimulation.

Depressive and rumination ratings decreased as a result of changes in brain activity.

We require more therapy options: According to Farzan, a professor at SFU’s School of Mechatronic Systems Engineering, “Major Depressive Disorder affects roughly 11% of teenagers and young adults, yet current therapies, such as medication and/or psychotherapy, fail to meaningfully relieve symptoms in about 30 to 50% of instances” (MSE). She is also the director of SFU’s brand-new eBrain Lab and holds the chair in technology innovations for youth addiction recovery and mental health.

Researchers point out that some drugs have also been linked to adverse consequences in children, including suicidal thoughts and behaviours, which has prompted the quest for less dangerous therapeutic choices.

Building on previous research: Previous research has shown a link between dysfunction of the prefrontal cortex and MDD. “Using TMS-EEG brain mapping technology, we also found that the prefrontal cortex in youth with MDD exhibited greater brain activity relative to healthy youth. It was very interesting to see in the current study that four weeks of TBS treatment seemed to reduce this excessive brain activity, possibly reflecting a return to a ‘healthy’ state,” says SFU doctoral student Prabhjot Dhami, the study’s first author.

Prefrontal cortex impairments in youth with MDD may also contribute to symptoms such as rumination and suicidal ideation/behaviour, Farzan notes. Since the prefrontal cortex is critical for executive functioning, dysfunction or deficits in this region can lead to the onset and maintenance of depressive symptoms.

The combination of prefrontal cortex-targeted TBS and a cognitive exercise that may potentially stimulate this brain region, according to the researchers, has the potential to maximise the prefrontal cortex’s influence on young people with MDD and more successfully reduce symptoms.

While earlier studies have connected commercial dietary supplements like nicotinamide riboside (NR), a form of vitamin B3, to advantages related to cardiovascular, metabolic, and neurological health, new research from the University of Missouri focused on imaging technology in an animal model has found that NR may raise the prevalence of a specific type of cancer and its brain metastasis.

To learn more about NR uptake, an international team of scientists led by Elena Goun, an associate professor of chemistry at MU, created a unique imaging sensor based on ultrasensitive bioluminescent imaging.

They applied this probe to identify particular cancers that possess high uptake of NR, such as triple-negative breast cancer (TBNC). Results from the study also gave an insight that NR supplementation could enhance cancer prevalence and spread to the brain. These findings have not been studied in humans, said Goun, who is the corresponding author of the study.

Goun explained that similar to the majority of other studies on the beneficial effects of NR supplementation, this study was performed in small animal models. The findings were in agreement with previous work published by several other independent research groups.

“Some people take them [vitamins and supplements] because they automatically assume that vitamins and supplements only have positive health benefits, but very little is known about how they actually work,” Goun said. “Because of this lack of knowledge, we were inspired to study the basic questions surrounding how vitamins and supplements work in the body.”

Following the death of her 59-year-old father only three months after being diagnosed with colon cancer, Goun was moved by her father’s passing to pursue a better scientific understanding of cancer metabolism, or the energy through which cancer spreads in the body.

Since NR is a known supplement for helping increase levels of cellular energy, and cancer cells feed off of that type of energy with their increased metabolism, Goun wanted to investigate NR’s role in cancer biology.

“Previous work published by other research groups have cautioned that the benefits of NR supplements should be weighed against potential negative side effects. Our work is especially important given the wide commercial availability and a large number of ongoing human clinical trials where NR is used to mitigate the side effects of cancer therapy in patients,” Goun said.

The researchers used imaging technology to compare and examine how much NR levels were present in cancer cells, T cells and healthy tissues.

“While NR is already being widely used in people and is being investigated in so many ongoing clinical trials for additional applications, much of how NR works is a black box — it’s not understood,” Goun said. “So that inspired us to come up with this novel imaging technique based on ultrasensitive bioluminescent imaging that allows quantification of NR levels in real-time in a non-invasive manner. The presence of NR is shown with light, and the brighter the light is, the more NR is present.”

Goun said the findings of the study emphasize the importance of having careful investigations of potential side effects for supplements like NR prior to their use in people who may have different types of health conditions.

In the future, Goun would like to provide information that could potentially lead to the development of certain inhibitors to help make cancer therapies like chemotherapy more effective in treating cancer. The key to this approach, Goun said, is to look at it from a personalized medicine standpoint.

“Not all cancers are the same in every person, especially from the standpoint of metabolic signatures,” Goun said. “Often times cancers can even change their metabolism before or after chemotherapy.”

The Sun Pharmaceuticals Halol factory in Gujarat was placed under import alert on Thursday by the US Food and Drug Administration.

The Import Alert implies that until the facility complies with CGMP standards, all future shipments of products made at this facility may be denied admission to the US market, according to a statement from the pharmaceutical company to the stock exchanges. The USFDA’s Current Good Manufacturing Practices regulations are referred to as CGMP. Systems for ensuring proper manufacturing process and facility design, monitoring, and control are provided by CGMPs.

14 of the company’s products are exempt from this import alert according to the USFDA, subject to some restrictions.

The statement claims that, with the 14 excluded goods indicated above, deliveries to the US market from the Halol facility accounted for around 3% of the company’s consolidated revenues for the year ending March 31, 2022.

The firm declared that it would take all necessary measures to address these problems and make sure that the regulator was wholly happy with the company’s corrective action. It also indicated that it would continue to collaborate with the USFDA.

It declared that it remained dedicated to providing CGMP-compliant goods to its clients and patients around the world.

According to a study, certain T cells that are reactive to microorganisms may also be reactive to common human proteins, leading to autoimmune illness. The discoveries should hasten attempts to develop better autoimmune disease diagnostic tests and therapies.

A team involving researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Stanford University School of Medicine and Oxford University has developed a way to find crucial protein fragments that drive autoimmunity, as well as the immune cells that respond to them. The findings, published Dec. 7 in Nature, open a promising pathway to diagnose and treat autoimmune diseases.

“Of all genes, the HLA genes have the greatest amount of variation across the human population. There are many, many autoimmune diseases that are associated with specific variants of the HLA genes, and in most cases we don’t know why,” said co-senior author Wayne M. Yokoyama, MD, the Sam J. Levin and Audrey Loew Levin Professor of Arthritis Research at Washington University. “This paper outlines a strategy for figuring out why certain HLA variants are linked to certain diseases. It also provides strong evidence that cross-reactivity between human and microbial proteins drives autoimmunity in at least two diseases and probably many others. Now that we understand the underlying drivers, we can start focusing on the approaches that are most likely to yield benefits for patients.”

The autoimmune diseases ankylosing spondylitis, which involves arthritis in the spine and pelvis, and acute anterior uveitis, which is characterized by inflammation in the eye, are both strongly associated with an HLA variant called HLA-B*27. The link between ankylosing spondylitis and HLA-B*27 was discovered 50 years ago — making it one of the first such associations identified between disease and HLA variants — and it remains one of the strongest known associations between any disease and an HLA variant.

The HLA family of proteins is involved in helping immune cells detect invading pathogens and distinguishing between microbial and human proteins, and is highly variable across individuals. HLA proteins function like hands that pick up fragments of whichever proteins are lying about — microbial or human — and show them to immune cells called T cells to figure out if they’re a sign of danger (microbial) or not (human).

T cells don’t recognize protein fragments by themselves; they recognize the fragment plus the hand that holds it. Scientists have long assumed that the combination of this particular hand — HLA-B*27 — plus a bit of an unknown human protein was being misidentified as dangerous in people with either of the two diseases, triggering autoimmune attacks in the eye or the spine. But for decades, they couldn’t find the fragment. Some scientists began to speculate that the misidentification hypothesis was wrong and some other reason accounted for the association between HLA-B*27 and the two diseases.

Co-corresponding author K. Christopher Garcia, PhD, and co-first author Xinbo Yang, PhD, of Stanford Medicine, along with co-corresponding authors Geraldine M. Gillespie, PhD, and Andrew J. McMichael, PhD, and co-first author Lee Garner, PhD, of Oxford University, collaborated with Yokoyama and co-first author Michael Paley, MD, PhD, of Washington University on a novel way to find the elusive fragment. The research team identified certain T cells that were abundant in the blood and joints of people with ankylosing spondylitis, and in the eyes of people with uveitis.

Garcia and Yang then devised a way to identify protein fragments that drive a T cell response when combined with HLA-B*27, and mapped the fragments against the human genome and five bacterial genomes to identify proteins from which the fragments may have originated. Using that approach, they were able to narrow down the millions of possibilities to a very short list of human and microbial proteins. Then, they determined the structures of the detector molecules — known as T cell receptors — on T cells from both groups of patients and compared them. The similarities were striking.

“This study reveals the power of studying T cell specificity and activity from the ground up; that is, identifying the T cells that are most active in a given response, followed by identifying what they respond to,” Garcia said. “Clearly these patient-derived TCRs are seeing a spectrum of common antigens, and that may be driving the autoimmunity. Proving this in humans is very difficult, but that is our future direction and could lead to therapeutics.”

The findings reveal key aspects of the biological mechanisms underlying ankylosing spondylitis, anterior uveitis and potentially many other autoimmune diseases.

“By combining recently developed technologies, we have revisited an old hypothesis that asks if the traditional antigen-presenting function of HLA-B*27 contributes to disease initiation or pathogenesis in the autoimmune conditions ankylosing spondylitis and uveitis,” Gillespie said. “Our findings that T cells at the sites of pathology recognize HLA-B*27 bound to both self and microbial antigens adds a very important layer of understanding to these complex conditions that also feature strong inflammatory signatures. Our hope is that this work will one day pave the way for more targeted therapies, not only for these conditions but ultimately, for other autoimmune diseases.”

By providing strong support for the idea that T cells that react to microbes also may react to normal human proteins, the findings promise to accelerate efforts to improve diagnostic tools and treatments for autoimmune diseases.

“For ankylosing spondylitis, the average time between initial symptoms and actual diagnosis is seven to eight years,” said Paley, an assistant professor of medicine, of ophthalmology, and of pathology & immunology. “Shortening that time with improved diagnostics could make a dramatic impact on patients’ lives, because treatment could be initiated earlier. As for therapeutics, if we could target these disease-causing T cells for elimination, we could potentially cure a patient or maybe even prevent the disease in people with the high-risk genetic variant. There’s a lot of potential for clinical benefit here.”

People who take cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins may have a lower risk of having a type of stroke called an intracerebral hemorrhage, according to a new study published in the December 7, 2022, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

An intracerebral hemorrhage is caused by bleeding in the brain. “While statins have been shown to reduce the risk of stroke from blood clots, there has been conflicting research on whether statin use increases or decreases the risk of a person having a first intracerebral hemorrhage,” said study author David Gaist, MD, PhD, of the University of Southern Denmark in Odense and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. “For our study, we looked at the lobe and non-lobe areas of the brain to see if location was a factor for statin use and the risk of a first intracerebral hemorrhage. We found that those who used a statin had a lower risk of this type of bleeding stroke in both areas of the brain. The risk was even lower with long-term statin use.”

The lobe area of the brain includes most of the cerebrum, including the frontal, parietal, temporal and occipital lobes. The non-lobe area primarily includes the basal ganglia, thalamus, cerebellum and brainstem.

In order to conduct the study, researchers combed through health data in Denmark and found 989 individuals with an intracerebral haemorrhage in the lobe region of the brain, with an average age of 76. They were contrasted with 39,500 individuals of a comparable age, sex, and other characteristics who did not experience this type of stroke.

They also examined 1,175 individuals with an intracerebral haemorrhage in the non-lobe regions of the brain, with an average age of 75. They were contrasted with 46,755 individuals of a comparable age, sex, and other characteristics who did not experience this kind of stroke.

Researchers gathered statin usage data from prescription records.

Of the total participants, 6.8% who had a stroke had been taking statins for five or more years, compared to 8.6% of those who did not have a stroke.

After adjusting for factors like high blood pressure, diabetes, and alcohol use, researchers found that people currently using statins had a 17% lower risk of having a stroke in the lobe areas of the brain and a 16% lower risk of stroke in the non-lobe areas of the brain.

Longer use of statins was associated with a lower risk of stroke in both areas of the brain. When using statins for more than five years, people had a 33% lower risk of having a stroke in the lobe area of the brain and a 38% lower risk of stroke in the non-lobe area of the brain.

“It’s reassuring news for people taking statins that these medications seem to reduce the risk of bleeding stroke as well as the risk of stroke from blood clots,” Gaist added. “However, our research was done in only the Danish population, which is primarily people of European ancestry. More research should be conducted in other populations.”