Saying No To Antidepressants To Treat People With Dementia

Alzheimer’s disease affects more than 6 million Americans of all ages. In 2021, an estimated 6.2 million Americans aged 65 and over will have Alzheimer’s disease.

Seventy-two percent are over the age of 75. Alzheimer’s Dementia affects one out of every nine adults aged 65 and over (11.3 percent). More than 55 million individuals worldwide suffer from Dementia, with roughly 10 million new cases diagnosed each year.

Saying No To Antidepressants To Treat People With Dementia

The most common treatment for treating Dementia is using antidepressants. Antidepressants including sertraline, citalopram, mirtazapine, and trazodone are commonly used for dementia patients who have hormonal problems.

Research has put forward evidence that antidepressants, particularly citalopram, can help to lessen agitation. This treatment can seem to be effective in the early stages but can raise Dementia risk significantly.

Saying No To Antidepressants To Treat People With Dementia

Dementia is one of the several diseases that increase at a higher rate. Many clinicians tried to recover the patient with the help of antidepressants. Still, in a recent survey, it is seen that such an antidepressant does not make any difference to the medical condition of the patient who has Dementia.

The study, headed by the University of Plymouth and published in The Lancet, found that the antidepressants had no effect on agitation in dementia patients in the long run and were perhaps more likely to be linked to death than no intervention at all. Medicine used to treat agitation in patients with Dementia is no more beneficial than a placebo and may potentially increase mortality.

Agitation is a typical dementia symptom marked by excessive verbal, vocal, or motor activity, as well as physical and verbal hostility. The primary solution should be non-drug patient-centered treatment, but if that doesn’t work, physicians may turn to a drug-based option.

The current best option and an alternative to antidepressants are antipsychotics. These antipsychotics have been shown to increase mortality rates in dementia patients, as well as other negative effects. Hence mirtazapine has been widely administered. This study was created to contribute to the body of data about its efficacy.

The research, which was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), gathered 204 persons with probable or suspected Alzheimer’s disease from 20 locations around the UK and randomly assigned half of them to mirtazapine and the other half to placebo.

The experiment was conducted in a double-blind fashion, which meant that neither the researcher nor the study participants knew what they were taking. The results indicated that after 12 weeks, the mirtazapine group had no less agitation than the control group. By week 16, there were also more deaths in the mirtazapine group (seven) than in the control group (one), albeit the difference was statistically insignificant.

Professor Sube Banerjee, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Health and Professor in Dementia at the University of Plymouth, who played a key role in the research and publishing, says that these results were rather astonishing and were unexpected but crucial. “In our world where Dementia is a serious concern, providing the best treatment is always the priority, and getting a major breakthrough is an achievement. Avoiding antidepressants can help us move closer to our goal and offer better treatment.”

“Dementia now affects 46 million people globally, with that number expected to quadruple in the next 20 years. Problems like agitation cause poor life quality, and we need to figure out how to help individuals who are impacted,” he stated.

The research demonstrates that a typical approach to symptom management is ineffective—and may possibly be harmful.” It’s critical that these findings are taken into consideration. There is also information that mirtazapine is no longer utilized to treat agitation in dementia patients.

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