Long-term antidepressant use linked to higher dementia risk

ANTIDEPRESSANTS may significantly increase the risk of developing dementia, experts have warned.

A study published in The British Medical Journal found a “robust link” between the degenerative disease and the medication, even when taken up to 20 years before a diagnosis. It suggests some patients with long-term exposure to the drugs could face a 30 per cent increased chance of dementia.

Researchers warned that there may be 20,000 people suffering from dementia as a result of taking the medication, part of a wider group called anti-cholinergics, also prescribed for bladder conditions and Parkinson’s dis- ease.

The Government medicines safety regulator said it was scrutinising the findings and last night leading medics called on colleagues to consider alternative prescriptions, but cautioned patients not to abandon the drugs before consulting their doctor. The antidepressants most implicated by the study include amitriptyline, dosulepin and paroxetine.

Dementia risk was also associated with the bladder drugs tolterodine, oxybutynin and solifenacin, as well as the Parkinson’s drug procyclidine. It is believed nearly 2 million people in England take these and similar drugs.

Anticholinergics target a part of the nervous system affecting learning and memory, as well as the heart, eye, stomach, mouth and bladder. Scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and Aston University studied approximately 27 million prescriptions from more than 324,000 NHS patients, going back 20 years.

Chris Fox, one of the authors, a professor of clinical psychiatry at UEA’S Norwich Medical School, said the study revealed a “potentially important risk”.

“Doctors and patients should therefore be vigilant about using anticholinergic medications,” he said.

“They need to consider the risk of long-term cognitive effects, as well as short-term effects associated with specific drugs when weighing up risks and benefits.”

Professor Clive Ballard, a professor of age-related diseases at University of Exeter Medical School, said: “The important thing is that even individual drugs which only have a very modest anticholinergic effects, when taken in combination with other drugs, can lead to a combined anticholinergic burden that may have a significant impact on cognition, highlighting the importance of care medication review.”