Jan,
The link on the BBC website refers to “sedatives” and to “anti-psychotic drugs for aggressiveness or agitation”. It doesn’t name particular drugs, of course, but if you want to know more about the original research project, then it’s available via The Lancet Neurology website. You just need to register to read the full text.
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laneur/article/PIIS1474-4422(09)70001-8/fulltext
There are other articles of interest too, many published today also.
The drugs mentioned in the research project “The dementia antipsychotic withdrawal trial (DART-AD) long-term follow-up of a randomised placebo-controlled trial” refers to: thioridazine, chlorpromazine, haloperidol, trifluoperazine, or risperidone.
It seems that the research was funded by the UK Alzheimer’s Research Trust, and Prof Clive Ballard features heavily.
There - in the ‘Antipsychotic drugs for dementia: a balancing act’ article - they refer to the ‘balancing act’ required when any antipsychotic drug is prescribed, and that is what Clive was talking about in his own thread. (I posted my link a few hours before Clive started his own thread, and as then I had not registered with The Lancet Neurology website, I didn’t have the link in question.)
But this was/is “the first long-term follow-up study to show that patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) on antipsychotic drugs are at increased risk of mortality”. They are not talking about the fact that we all will die at some point, which we know is a certainty, but merely about the early death of some dementia patients as a result of long-term use.
There is also mention of the fact that:
“Inadequate numbers of staff and a lack of appropriate training mean that antipsychotics are used unnecessarily as a first option in many instances.
More studies, including randomised controlled trials, to test the efficacy of psycho-social alternatives might help to convince policy makers to invest in improved training of multidisciplinary teams that should include specialist dementia nurses.
Greater involvement of families in care decisions and frequent monitoring and review of care plans would also help to ensure that treatment is tailored to individual patients.
The risks and benefits of prescribing antipsychotics to patients with dementia need to be carefully balanced and these drugs should be used only if alternative strategies do not work.
To protect the health and dignity of people with dementia and reduce the use of antipsychotic drugs, approaches that make the needs of patients central to decisions about care should be promoted.”
I can’t argue with that all.
The BBC item was reporting fairly accurately, and merely intended to bring it to the public awareness, into the public domain. Some of the other ‘newspaper reports’ were less accurate, in their reporting, in particular Sky!
I am not an expert in dementia; I am dealing with it day by day; and also with the aftermath, the fallout. We are all struggling; so as far as I can see, the more the next generation can be made ‘aware’ of all the questions that need to be considered – and I include, there, the next generation of professionals too – then so much the better, surely.