A report by the Alzheimer's Research Trust has found that many patients are dying earlier as a result of the surfeit of sedatives being prescribed to them. Antipsychotic drugs are being used indiscriminately to control patients with dementia, the five-year research found.
Lead researcher Professor Clive Ballard said the sedatives were doing more harm than good and were hastening death by at least 6 months. The drugs called neuroleptics are given to at least 150,000 people with Alzheimer's disease in nursing homes, the study estimated.
Prevailing guidelines say neuroleptics must only be given to violent patients, but these guidelines were flaunted in nursing homes. The study followed 165 patients with Alzheimer's disease in some 100 nursing homes in the UK.
Professor Ballard and his colleagues from King's College London randomly assigned half these patients to receive a placebo instead of drugs like chlorpromazine, haloperidol and risperidone. After 2 years 78 percent of the placebo group were alive as compared to just 55 percent in the drug group. At three years these figures stood at 62 percent and 35 percent respectively.
"It is very clear that even over a six month period of treatment, there is no benefit of neuroleptics in treating the behaviour in people with Alzheimer's disease when the symptoms are mild," Professor Ballard said.
Reacting to the study, Neil Hunt, chief executive of the Alzheimer's Society said it was a national scandal, "It is a disturbing revelation that confirms some of our worst fears about neuroleptics, which have been the subject of numerous health warnings," he added.
