Amytriptyline and dementia

[Blister4]

Hi

Just had a telephone consult with the pharmacist re my meds. She mentioned the link between amytriptyline and dementia, and I’m not freaked out!

That drug has been a life saver in many ways. I want to continue with it but now I’m scared and my anxiety is through the roof.

Any thoughts? Xx

[Gambit62]

I hope this helps

Please note that when medics talk about higher risk they are generally talking about a correlation - eg people with larger shoe sizes tend to be taller - rather than a causal relationship eg wearing a larger shoe size will make you taller (it won't )

This is the conclusion from an article published in the BMJ in 2018 related to higher incidence of dementia in patients who were using antidepressants such as amytripyilineI have highlighted the most relevant bit in bold

Conclusions A robust association between some classes of anticholinergic drugs and future dementia incidence was observed. This could be caused by a class specific effect, or by drugs being used for very early symptoms of dementia. Future research should examine anticholinergic drug classes as opposed to anticholinergic effects intrinsically or summing scales for anticholinergic exposure.

bmj.com/content/361/bmj.k1315

Basically there is a higher incidence but the cause isn't known and needs more research.

Not sure if the research has been done - it would not appear to have been published as I suspect it would have come up higher in the search than this ....

[Blister4 in reply to Gambit62]

HiGreat information there! Thankyou for taking the time to post.

I got myself all in a tizz yesterday, however I’m thinking more clearly today.

Always find it helpful to make informed choices when I’ve listened to thoughts and input from others.

Take care

[designguy]

I went through a similar thing a few years ago. At the time I was taking Klonopin, a benzo and my med prescriber wanted me to get off of it because a study had come out that linked it with possible dementia. I did some research and found the study, it turned out that the participants in the study with dementia symptoms were also longterm alcoholics, so in reality the study was flawed.

I wound up later tapering off the klonopin but not because of the dementia scare. I also got another med prescriber.

My advice is to do some research yourself before taking one persons word for it and jumping to the worst case scenario.