Medications and memory

UF researchers find link between certain medications and cognitive decline

Medicines designed to help with chronic health conditions may speed memory loss in older adults, according to a UF researcher and his colleagues. Kenneth Heilman, M.D., a distinguished professor of neurology at the UF College of Medicine and UF ’s McKnight Brain Institute, recently co-authored a study published in the journal PLOS ONE showing that older people who begin regularly taking medications called anticholinergics experience a more rapid rate of cognitive decline than those who do not. Anticholinergics are most commonly used in painkillers, antidepressants, overactive bladder medications and antihistamines. They block acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter that plays a crucial role in learning and memory, either directly or — more often — indirectly as a side effect. Prior studies have shown a connection between the prevalent use of anticholinergic medications and impaired cognitive function, such as memory loss, in older people. Heilman and colleagues sought to discover at what rate the initiation of these medications affects the same population. They used data from the Religious Orders Study, a longitudinal study conducted at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago with more than 1,100 older religious clergy. The participants were screened for dementia at enrollment and underwent annual medical and psychological evaluations. The data, which were collected for an average of 10 years, detail participants’ global cognitive functioning, medical histories and medications. The researchers found that participants who began using the medication during the course of the study had a steeper decline in cognitive functioning than those who had never used the medication. Notably, they also started to decline 2.9 times faster than they were prior to taking the drugs. — Marilee Griffin