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The antipsychotic drugs that are prescribed to treat aggression in Alzheimer's patients appear to significantly increase their risk of premature death, British researchers reported on Friday.

The results of the first long-term study on the effect of these drugs in people with Alzheimer's disease highlights the need to seek less harmful treatments for many of these patients, the team said Clive Ballard of King's College London.


During its investigation of three years duration, the men and women who received a placebo were 42 percent less likely to die than those who continued taking antipsychotic medication, revealed the study published in the journal Lancet Neurology.

"Our data add further serious concerns about the safety of long-term use of antipsychotics in this population, and physicians should seek to replace them with safer approaches," wrote the authors.


Alzheimer's is an incurable brain disease that worsens over time and is the most common form of dementia. The condition affects 26 million people worldwide, according to the Alzheimer's Association.

The antipsychotic drugs are being used increasingly to treat the personality changes and aggression-related illness, but the new findings suggest that many patients are not worth the risk.


"Our view is that there is still an important but limited to atypical antipsychotics in the treatment of (symptoms), severe (Alzheimer's), particularly aggression," the researchers reported.

"However, security concerns (...) accumulated stress the urgent need to end the protracted and unnecessary prescriptions," they added.


The study, conducted between 2001 and 2004, 128 patients from 67 to 100 years were randomly assigned to continue antipsychotic treatment for 12 months or switch to a placebo therapy.

Among the drugs used were generic treatments thioridazine, chlorpromazine, haloperidol and trifluorperazina and Risperdal, or risperidone, Johnson & Johnson.


After a year, only a few people in the group treated with antipsychotic drugs had died, but at 36 months survival in the placebo cohort was 59 percent, compared to 30 percent among patients receiving the drugs.