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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Lithium and risk for Alzheimer's disease in elderly patients with bipolar disorder | | Author(s) | Paula V Nunes, Orestes V Forlenza, Wagner F Gattaz |
| Journal title | British Journal of Psychiatry, vol 190, April 2007 |
| Pages | pp 359-360 |
| Source | http://bjp.rcpsych.org |
| Keywords | Drugs ; Dementia ; Schizophrenia ; Clinical surveys ; Brazil. |
| Annotation | Bipolar disorder is associated with increased risk for dementia. The authors compared the prevalence of Alzheimer's disease (AD) between 66 older euthymic patients with bipolar disorder who were on chronic lithium therapy and 48 similar patients without recent lithium therapy. The prevalence of dementia in the whole sample was 19% vs 7% in an age-comparable population. Alzheimer's disease was diagnosed in 3 patients (5%) on lithium and in 16 patients (33%) who were not on lithium. The case-controlled data for this Brazilian study suggest that lithium treatment reduced the prevalence of Alzheimer's disease in patients with bipolar disorder to levels in the general older population. This is in accordance with reports that lithium inhibits crucial processes in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-070510229 A |
| Classmark | LLD: EA: ELK: 3G: 7W6 |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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