Last Updated: 2003-08-19 16:55:01 -0400 (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Long-term treatment with cholesterol-lowering "statins" -- drugs like Zocor or Lipitor -- seems to be good not only for the heart but also for mental health, researchers in Boston report.

That news, while welcome, is somewhat unexpected. More than a decade ago, vigorous cholesterol lowering was actually linked with depression and violent behavior, Dr. Charles M. Blatt, of the Harvard School of Public Health, and associates point out in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

To investigate, Dr. Blatt's team followed a group of patients receiving statin treatment to treat high cholesterol levels. Beginning in 1994, the researchers enrolled 140 patients who were continuously prescribed statins and another 219 patients who used the drugs intermittently. They were compared with 231 people who had never been prescribed a cholesterol-lowering drug.

"Statins seem to be associated with a reduced risk of anxiety, depression and hostility," co-author Yinong Young-Xu commented in a press release. "We saw somewhere between a 30 to 40 percent reduction of risk."

Furthermore, the researchers found, the odds of mental illness continued to decline with each additional year of statin treatment.

"Although this study does not demonstrate that statin use itself caused increases in positive well-being, it certainly supports that possibility," Dr. C. Keith Haddock, of the University of Missouri, Kansas City, said in the press statement.

On the other hand, "It also suggests that factors related to coronary artery disease may have rendered the patient vulnerable to negative mood and that statin reversed that process."

Whatever the exact cause-and effect, the study helps dispel concerns about the psychological side effects of lowering cholesterol.