Anti-anxiety drugs dementia link
Popular anti-anxiety drugs, such as Valium, have been linked with an increased risk of dementia in pensioners, according to new research. Patients over the age of 65 years who started taking benzodiazepines had a 50% increased chance of developing dementia within 15 years compared with people who had never used the drug.
Popular anti-anxiety drugs, such as Valium, have been linked with an increased risk of dementia in pensioners, according to new research.
Patients over the age of 65 years who started taking benzodiazepines, also known as benzos, had a 50% increased chance of developing dementia within 15 years compared with people who had never used the drug, researchers from the University of Bordeaux, France, claimed.
The drug is widely used in many countries, with 30% of people aged over 65 years and living in France taking benzodiazepines.
The research examined 1,063 people with an average age of 78 years over two decades. They had never taken the drug before and were all free from dementia. They found 95 patients started taking benzodiazepine during the study.
After a 15year follow-up, 253 people developed dementia. Of these, 30 began to take the drugs between three and five years into the study.
The chance of dementia occurring in those who had taken the drugs was 4.8 per 100 “person years” – a statistical measure representing one person at risk of development of a disease during a period of one year.
“In this large, prospective, population based study of elderly people who were free of dementia and did not use benzodiazepines until at least the third year of follow-up, new use of benzodiazepines was associated with a significant, about 50% increase in the risk of dementia,” the authors wrote.
Benzodiazepines remain useful for the treatment of acute anxiety states and transient insomnia, but have reported links to increased falls in the elderly.
The authors warned physicians to carefully assess the expected benefits of the use of benzodiazepines in the light of these adverse effects and, whenever possible, limit prescription to a few weeks as recommended by the good practice guidelines.
“In particular, uncontrolled chronic use of benzodiazepines in elderly people should be cautioned against,” they stated.
