Dementia is one of the leading causes of death in older people in Western countries. According to a study by the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom), more than 55 million people worldwide suffer from it, with Alzheimer’s being the most common disease. And experts are still looking for options to stop it in time. Now researchers at this British university have found an association between lithium and less risk of developing this neurodegenerative disease.
Lithium is a chemical element that is used to treat people diagnosed with bipolar disorder, early cognitive impairment or dementia, as it has a great ability to stabilize mood. But the current work, which has been published in the journal PLoS Medicine, has found that it could also be used to prevent the latter disorder.
The research has been carried out with a sample of 29,618 patients with an average age of 74, of whom 548 were treated with lithium. Of the total, 9.7% of those who received lithium had a diagnosis of dementia between 2005 and 2019 who were followed up, a figure that rose to 11.2% in the case of those who had not received treatment with lithium. chemical element.
Dementia, a great pressure for the health system
To get better results, the researchers took into account other risk factors for dementia, such as medications, smoking, or physical and mental illness. Once everything was analyzed, it was found that lithium was related to a lower risk of dementia, both in the short and long term.
“It has been estimated that delaying the onset of dementia by as little as five years could reduce its prevalence and economic impact by up to 40%”
“The number of people with dementia continues to grow, putting huge pressure on health systems. It has been estimated that delaying the onset of dementia by as little as five years could reduce its prevalence and economic impact by up to 40%,” explains Dr. Shanquan Chen of the Cambridge Department of Psychiatry and first author of the study.
Despite these findings, the researchers emphasize that their study is observational in nature and that the patients who received lithium were few, so hasty conclusions should not yet be drawn. “We expected to find that patients with bipolar disorder were more likely to develop dementia, as that is the most common reason lithium is prescribed, but our analysis suggested otherwise. It’s too early to say for sure, but it’s possible that lithium could reduce the risk of dementia in people with bipolar disorder.”
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