Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
Pivot Concepts:   Target Concepts:
Query: UMLS:C0751295 (memory loss)
 3,619 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Pharmacological treatment of dementia addresses two main clinical features of the disease: cognitive deterioration with predominantly memory loss and behavioural and psychological symptoms (BPSD). While cholinesterase inhibitors are recommended in an attempt to delay memory loss and disability, what should be considered the most appropriate pharmacological treatment for BPSD has remained questionable. Antipsychotic medications, conventional and atypical agents, have been increasingly utilized in clinical practice but only a small number of clinical studies have investigated their relative cost-benefit ratio. This review focuses on the safety of atypical and conventional antipsychotics when used in patients with BPSD. Overall, atypical and conventional antipsychotics are associated with a similarly increased risk for all-cause mortality and cerebrovascular events. Relative to atypical agents users, patients being treated with conventional antipsychotics have an increased incidence of cardiac arrhythmias and extrapyramidal symptoms. Conversely, users of atypical antipsychotics are exposed to an increased risk of venous thromboembolism and aspiration pneumonia. Also, metabolic effects (i.e. increased risk of diabetes, weight gain) have consistently been documented in clinical studies with atypical antipsychotics, although this effect tends to be attenuated with advancing age and in elderly patients with dementia. Antipsychotics, both conventional and atypical, should be used with caution only when nonpharmacologic approaches have failed to adequately control BPSD. More effective interventions are necessary to improve postmarket drug safety in vulnerable populations.
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PMID:Use of antipsychotics in elderly patients with dementia: do atypical and conventional agents have a similar safety profile? 1897 43

If we're thinking about Dementia, we normally don't think about a sudden crisis. Dementia is a slowly creeping illness, which causes a loss of memory. In addition to this loss of cognitive functions, there is also the death of neural cells, which in turn leads to completely different symptoms. This leads to the appearance of BPSD (Behavioural and psychotic symptoms of dementia). There are guides to the therapy of cognitive deficits of dementia in existence, to use them within the EbM criteria. There exists only a little bit of information on the therapy of BPSD. Therefore I will talk in his article mainly about possibilities of therapy, that were found through medical experience. For those possibilities is only little evidence and are mostly off label, because the field of dementia patients has almost no studies, except pharmaceutical ones. The cause for this lack of studies is probably found in the huge Workload by the ethic commission of every study, which are today the norm for every single study. So please take my work as a foundation for discussion, though which you search for the most optimal solution for the individual problem of your patient.
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PMID:[Sudden Crisis in Dementia]. 2919 13