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Benzodiazepines and Dementia Risk


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Here are yet two more pieces of literature on the possible connection between benzodiazepines and dementia. It seems that there's little definitive information on this topic at this point. Personally, I find that there's plenty of information about the known risks of this class of medication, and that waiting to get a definitive answer on whether benzodiazepines do or do not cause dementia doesn't make sense. We already know about the long list of other risks, and that's enough for many of us not to take them ever again.

 

This first link is for an abstract that doesn't contain content, but the title gives us a clear sense of what it says:

"Benzodiazepines don't increase risk for dementia in general". If you have access to an online medical library and can find this article, please share a link with us here on BB.

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27123721

 

This second article, entitled "Benzodiazepines: No Dementia Risk?", is here:

 

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/858249#vp_1

 

 

 

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I'm confused by this as well. I have a benzo reference/help page in Italian on Facebook and I post articles. I recently saw this Medscape one saying benzos don't increase risk of dementia.

 

I'd like ti know what the truth is before posting on my page.

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The truth is that they just don't know yet. There seems to be an association, but the relationship isn't clear. That is, no one can say for sure whether benzos cause dementia. But we already know that they affect cognition, memory, balance, muscles, coordination, reaction time, quality of sleep, etc. All of those issues are already worse in most elderly people due to aging, so taking a medication that worsens things makes little sense.

 

If you're posting the articles on another site, you can just say the truth, i.e. more study is needed before a definitive answer will be available.

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The truth is that they just don't know yet. There seems to be an association, but the relationship isn't clear. That is, no one can say for sure whether benzos cause dementia. But we already know that they affect cognition, memory, balance, muscles, coordination, reaction time, quality of sleep, etc. All of those issues are already worse in most elderly people due to aging, so taking a medication that worsens things makes little sense.

 

If you're posting the articles on another site, you can just say the truth, i.e. more study is needed before a definitive answer will be available.

 

:thumbsup:

 

Makes "nonsense" if you ask me!  :idiot:

 

Why not do a study on patients aged between, say, 25-35 years and see how many of them developed early onset dementia.  Now wouldn't that be REALLY useful information?

 

Here's a meta-analysis published a year ago, I'm not sure whether it's been posted already.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4446315/

 

 

Introduction

The guidelines recommend that the overall duration of benzodiazepine use should be limited to several weeks [8], but long-term use is still common [3, 9, 10]. Studies performed in patients aged 65 years and over reported a seven-year period of benzodiazepine use on average [11]. Several observational studies investigated the association between long-term benzodiazepine use and risk of dementia but presented mixed results. Some studies revealed an increased risk of dementia [12–16] among benzodiazepine users, whereas other studies revealed a decreased risk of dementia [17].

 

 

And just to liven and complicate things a little more, what exactly is "dementia" anyway?

Dementia is a general term that refers to a variety of brain disorders.  :-\

 

 

3. Limitations

Our review has several limitations. First, inclusion of a small number of studies did not permit us to investigate the potential effect modifiers for the association of benzodiazepine use and dementia through subgroup analyses. For example, Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia are the main subtypes of dementia, and they have different incidence and etiology. However, we could not confirm whether the risk of Alzheimer’s disease is different from that of vascular dementia due to limited numbers of included studies.

 

 

My very humble and very, very skeptical opinion?  Take it with a grain of salt.

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