Featured Review: The impact of medications with anticholinergic effects on future problems with memory and thinking

In thisrecently published Cochrane review, the author team explored whether taking a certain type of medication could make older people more likely to develop dementia.  Discussing the review, Terry Quinn, senior author, said: " Almost every week we see a newspaper headline describing something new that allegedly causes or protects against dementia. These features attract attention as we all want to protect our brain health, but there is often little science behind the headlines.There has been a lot of recent interest around whether certain prescribed medications can cause dementia. A class of medication frequently implicated in causing dementia are the ‘anticholinergics’. Medications with anticholinergic effects are commonly prescribed for conditions like hayfever, asthma, and urinary problems.In this review we collated all the published evidence around anticholinergic prescribing and future risk of dementia. We found that taking anticholinergic medication long-term is associated with an increased risk of future dementia, and the more anticholinergic medications taken, the bigger the risk.Reviews that look at whether a factor can predict future health require a different approach to the standard systematic review. These prognosis reviews are a relatively new method for Cochrane but are incredibly important for the dementia field.   So, should people taking anticholinergic medications be worried? At the individual level, the risk of dementia was small and many of the i...
Source: Cochrane News and Events - Category: Information Technology Authors: Source Type: news