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[...] The research team studied the medical records of 40,770 patients aged over 65 diagnosed with dementia, and compared them to the records of 283,933 people without dementia. More than 27 million prescriptions were analysed.
[...] They found that there was a greater incidence of dementia among patients prescribed greater quantities of anticholinergic antidepressants, and anticholinergic medication for bladder conditions and Parkinson's.
[...] "We studied patients with a new dementia diagnosis and looked at what anticholinergic medication they were prescribed between four and 20 years prior to being diagnosed.
"We found that people who had been diagnosed with dementia were up to 30 per cent more likely to have been prescribed specific classes of anticholinergic medications. And the association with dementia increases with greater exposure to these types of medication.
"What we don't know for sure is whether the medication is the cause. It could be that these medications are being prescribed for very early symptoms indicating the onset of dementia.
"But because our research shows that the link goes back up to 15 or 20 years before someone is eventually diagnosed with dementia, it suggests that reverse causation, or confounding with early dementia symptoms, probably isn't the case.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 29 2018, @10:45AM
1. Take drugs to beat disease.
2. Live longer.
3. Get dementia and cancer as time goes by.
Ergo, medication causes dementia and cancer in the same way water and carbon have a 100% mortality rate since anything that lived and died consumed water and carbon.
Putting aside the correlation/causation/duck/witch jokes, there's research like https://www.alzforum.org/news/research-news/dementia-numbers-developing-world-point-global-epidemic [alzforum.org] suggesting access to medicine, eating healthy and living in a less polluted environment (as indicated by higher education) reduce the likelihood of getting dementia regardless of where you live.
If you want to rule out pollution verses medicine in the above, just look at high-income Beijing families. They still get good medicine but they can't escape the environmental pollution. It's how the vehicle traffic -> air pollution -> cancer and asthma links were made.