A new study has found that those diagnosed with dementia were almost a third more likely to have been prescribed anticholinergic medicines, drugs are used to treat depression and certain bladder conditions.
“What we don’t know for sure is whether the medication is the cause” said George Savva from the University of East Anglia’s School of Health Science. He has co-authored the study in the BMJ medical journal.
“It could be that these medications are being prescribed for very early symptoms indicating the onset of dementia.”
Anticholinergic drugs are used to block nerve impulses to reduce spasms of the bladder muscles and to ease depression symptoms.
The researchers have compared compared the medical records of 40,770 dementia patients over 65 to those of 283,933 people without dementia.