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This is the first study to confirm concerns about higher mortality risks for Alzheimers patients who are given antipsychotic drugs.

What Other Options Are There?

Obviously, some Alzheimer’s patients need help controlling their anger, which is part of the disease.

In the advice to physicians, Medpage Today editors note that there are other options than these medications.

… “the researchers recommended replacing antipsychotics with psychological management or, for some neuropsychiatric symptoms, memantine (Namenda) or antidepressants such as citalopram (Celexa).

Medpage Today

“For patients with Alzheimer’s disease, antipsychotic medications substantially increase one-year mortality risk, researchers found.

“Patients who continued on their antipsychotic regimen were 42% more likely to die over a one-year period than those who switched to placebo (P=0.02), Clive Ballard, M.D., of King’s College London, and colleagues reported online in The Lancet Neurology.

“In the randomized controlled discontinuation trial, the survival disadvantage rose with continued antipsychotic use through more than three years’ follow-up.

“These findings are the first to confirm in the long term the mounting concerns about elevated mortality seen in 12-week trials, the researchers noted.

“The accumulating safety concerns, including the substantial increase in long-term mortality,” they wrote, “emphasize the urgent need to put an end to unnecessary and prolonged prescribing.”

Source:  Medpage Today,  January 9, 2009

Citation Source: The Lancet Neurology Online Edition