Originally published February 26 2006
French researchers find some anti-cholinergic drugs impede brain activity
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Marie Ancelin, Ph.D., a senior research fellow at the French National Health Research Unit, discusses recent research that suggests a certain class of drugs, including antihistamines, impairs cognitive function.
A range of drugs commonly prescribed to older patients have side effects that can lead to mild cognitive impairment and should be used cautiously, researchers here reported.
Such deficits mean older patients are "highly likely to be classified as mildly cognitively impaired," Dr. Ancelin and colleagues reported online in the Feb. 1 issue of BMJ, formerly the British Medical Journal.
In unintentional irony, patients diagnosed as having mild cognitive impairment are likely to be given acetylcholinesterase inhibitors, the researchers noted - adding that physicians should assess the cholinergic effects of the drugs patients are already taking before adding an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor.
In a longitudinal cohort study in the Montpellier region, east of Marseilles, the researchers enrolled 372 people over the age of 60, who were without dementia when they were recruited.
The researchers found that 297 participants had taken no anti-cholinergic drugs either at baseline or in the following year, while 30 had taken at least one continually.
* 80% of the continual users were classified as having mild cognitive impairment compared with 35% of non-users.
* Compared with non-users, continual users had poorer performance on reaction time, attention, delayed non-verbal memory, narrative recall, visuospatial construction, and language tasks, but not on tasks of reasoning, immediate and delayed recall of word lists, and implicit memory.
* At the eight-year follow-up, the risk of developing dementia was approximately the same, 16% for continual users versus 14% for non-users.
The researchers noted that a primary aim of research into mild cognitive impairment has been to slow the progress to dementia with pro-cholinergic drugs, such as Aricept (donepezil) or Reminyl (galantamine).
"People with mild cognitive impairment due to anti-cholinergic drugs could be in the absurd situation of receiving pro-cholinergic drugs to counteract the effects of anti-cholinergic agents," the researchers said.
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