Mood stabiliser may help prevent dementia

Lithium may reduce the risk of developing dementia, according to new UK research.

Dementia affects nearly half a million people in the UK.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge analysed health records of nearly 30,000 patients from Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust.

The patients were all over the age of 50 and accessed NHS mental health services between 2005 and 2019.

The analysis revealed that patients who received lithium were less likely to develop dementia than those who did not, although only a small number of patients received the drug.

Their findings, reported in the journal PLoS Medicine, support the possibility that lithium could be a preventative treatment for dementia, and could be progressed to large randomised controlled trials.

First author Dr Shanquan Chen from Cambridge’s Department of Psychiatry, said:

“The number of people with dementia continues to grow, which puts huge pressure on healthcare systems.

“It’s been estimated that delaying the onset of dementia by just five years could reduce its prevalence and economic impact by as much as 40 percent.”

Lithium is a mood stabiliser usually prescribed for conditions such as bipolar disorder and depression.

Both of these conditions put patients at a greater risk of dementia, so the researchers took this into account when conducting their analysis.

Of the 29,618 patients in the study cohort, 548 patients had been treated with lithium and 29,070 had not.

Their mean age was just under 74 years, and approximately 40 per cent of patients were male.

For the group that had received lithium, 53, or 9.7 per cent, were diagnosed with dementia. For the group that had not received lithium, 3,244, or 11.2 per cent, were diagnosed with the condition.

After controlling for risk factors such as smoking and other physical and mental illnesses, lithium was associated with a lower dementia risk in both short and long-term users.

Larger, clinical trials would be needed before lithium could be established as a potential for the condition.

Chen said:

“We expected to find that patients with bipolar disorder were more likely to develop dementia, since that is the most common reason to be prescribed lithium, but our analysis suggested the opposite.

“It’s far too early to say for sure, but it’s possible that lithium might reduce the risk of dementia in people with bipolar disorder.”