Statins improve visual field alterations related to hypercholesterolemia.

Objective: To determine whether lipid-lowering treatment with diet or statins would provide beneficial effects on visual field alterations associated with hypercholesterolemia.

Methods: 180 subjects with hypercholesterolemia were randomly assigned to a low fat diet (diet group) or to a low fat diet plus 40 mg/day of pravastatin (pravastatin group). At the beginning of the study and 6 months after the assigned treatment, all subjects underwent a computerized perimetry test and a determination of plasma concentration of glucose, total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol (LDL-C), HDL-cholesterol (HDL-C) and triglycerides.

Hypercholesterolemia is associated with visual field alterations detectable with computerized perimetry.

Computerized perimetry analysis of the visual field enables the capacity of the visual cortex to process the electric impulse received from the eyeball to be detected. Considering that hypercholesterolemia can cause cognitive worsening by altering the functioning of the cerebral cortex, we attempted to determine whether it can affect the cortical processing of the visual stimuli, as detected by computerized perimetry. We undertook computerized perimetry analysis of 208 male and female patients (mean age, 48.