Common Class of Drugs Linked to Dementia, Even When Taken 20 Years Before Diagnosis

Anticholinergic effects from OTC and prescribed medications have a powerful effect on cognition and it becomes more powerful as you get older. I've posted on this before, but we all need reminders that many, many drugs have anticholinergic effects....

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The largest and most detailed study of the long-term impact of anticholinergic drugs, a class of drugs commonly prescribed in the United States and United Kingdom as antidepressants and incontinence medications, has found that their use is associated with increased risk of dementia, even when taken 20 years before diagnosis of cognitive impairment.

An international research team from the US, UK and Ireland analyzed more than 27 million prescriptions as recorded in the medical records of 40,770 patients over age 65 diagnosed with dementia compared to the records of 283,933 older adults without dementia.

The researchers found greater incidence of dementia among patients prescribed anticholinergic antidepressants, anticholinergic bladder medications and anticholinergic Parkinson’s disease medications than among older adults who were not prescribed these drugs.

Dementia increased with greater exposure to anticholinergic medications.

“Anticholinergic Medication and Risk of Dementia: Case-control Study” is published in BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal) an international peer-reviewed medical journal.

“Anticholinergics, medications that block acetylcholine, a nervous system neurotransmitter, have previously been implicated as a potential cause of cognitive impairment,”