Aricept research/effectiveness....

[Charlie]

I would like to find out whether Aricept has long term control over Alzheimer's or whether, as we now suspect, its effects may be relatively short term.

My father has Alzheimer's and was diagnosed about three years ago. He only started taking Aricept one year ago and there was a definite improvement in the situation or at least a very noticable slow down. However, after almost exactly one year his condition is much worse and he seems to be having a lot of very noticable accellerated problems.

It is very hard to work out whether this is indeed a natural course of his Alzheimers or whether Aricept provides only temporary relief.

My question: Where can I find some facts on active research on Aricept and the long or short term effectiveness. I have been to the Aricept website but do not feel comfortable with the information provided by a drug manufacture. It is independant facts and research that we are looking for.

Many thanks
Charlie........

 

[LesleyAnne]

research on effectiveness of Aricept

Dear Charlie
I attach here two references from journal articles that report on studies on the efficacy of Aricept. One is from the Portsmouth memory clinic where they assessed people with dementia after they withdrew from an anticholinesterase treatment..the results showed a wide variation in people's cognitive abilities.
As far as keeping up with research on drug treatments our website will give comments on major pieces of study as they appear, the National electronic Library for Health (NeLH) now provides free access (from a UK email address) to the Cochrane library http://www.nelh.nhs.uk/cochrane.asp which provides references to both current and finished reviews of evidence on health treatments. There is a specific group dedicated to dementia - The Cochrane dementia and cognitive improvement group - you can read about their work under About the Cochrane library from the above address...
Also from the NeLH http://www.nelh.nhs.uk/ you can access the US National library of Medicine database that indexes millions of journal articles from health publications world wide! Obviously there will be some delay between the publication of a journal before it appears on their database but it is a tremendous source of information and free! Go to NeLH home page and look on left hand side menu under Knowledge and you will see MEDLINE/PubMed
Please let me know if you would like copies of the full articles as attached.
Best wishes
LesleyAnne

 

[Charlie]

Thanks!

Lesley,

many many thanks. This is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. I'll have a good look at these links tomorrow AM.

thanks for sharing your knowledge!
Charlie

 

[KatsWhiskers]

Charlie

my Mum was prescribed Aricept a year ago and quite honestly I feel that I can equate as she too has worsened.

Am not really sure how she would of been is she hadn't taken it but
the violent outbursts and physical/verbal abuse is dreadful.

I wish you luck with your father

Mary