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Drugs for the Elderly May Impair Mental Functions, Study Shows
Chantal Britt, Bloomberg.com
Canada
February 1, 2006
Drugs commonly used in elderly patients to treat bowel disorders, incontinence and Parkinson's disease may lead to mild mental impairment, according to a study published in the British Medical Journal.
About 10 percent of the 372 people studied took these anticholinergic drugs over an extended period, said Karen Ritchie, research director at the Hopital La Colombiere in Montpellier, France. Drug users had worse cognitive performance than non-users, and 80 percent were impaired mentally compared with 35 percent of non-users, Ritchie found.
"Anticholinergic drugs remained the most highly significant predictor of this condition," Ritchie said in the study. "Doctors should assess current use of anticholinergic drugs in elderly people with mild cognitive impairment before considering treatment for dementia."
The drugs are commonly used in elderly patients to treat illnesses such as irritable bowel syndrome, urinary incontinence, and Parkinson's disease. Users of these drugs had "significant" deficits in cognitive functioning, Ritchie said. There wasn't an increased risk of developing dementia, she said.
Anticholinergic drugs include antidepressants, painkillers and therapies for epilepsy, rheumatism, heart disease, incontinence, asthma and Parkinson's disease. They may affect older people's reaction time, response time, ability to remember faces and conversations, language and visual perception of space, the researchers showed.
In U.S. nursing homes more than 30 percent of elderly residents take more than two anticholinergic drugs, and 5 percent take more than five, the researchers said. About 51 percent of the general population use the medicines, they said. The therapies may affect the brains of the elderly more because they are absorbed quicker, excreted slower and may interact with other drugs.
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