TUESDAY, July 16, 2024 (HealthDay News) — Use of benzodiazepines is not associated with increased dementia risk in older adults, according to a study published online July 2 in BMC Medicine.

Ilse vom Hofe, from Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands, and colleagues examined long-term effects of benzodiazepines (anxiolytics or sedative-hypnotics) on neurodegeneration and dementia risk. The analysis included 5,443 cognitively healthy older adults participating in the population-based Rotterdam Study.

The researchers found that 49.5 percent of participants had used benzodiazepines at any time in the 15 years preceding baseline and 12.8 percent were still using at baseline assessment. During 11.2 years of follow-up, use of benzodiazepines was not associated with dementia risk overall versus never use (hazard ratio [HR], 1.06; 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 0.90 to 1.25), irrespective of cumulative dose. Risk estimates trended higher for any use of anxiolytics than for sedative-hypnotics (HR, 1.17 [95 percent CI, 0.96 to 1.41] versus 0.92 [95 percent CI, 0.70 to 1.21]), with the strongest associations for a high cumulative dose of anxiolytics (HR, 1.33; 95 percent CI, 1.04 to 1.71). Current use of benzodiazepines was associated with lower brain volumes of the hippocampus, amygdala, and thalamus cross-sectionally. Longitudinally, benzodiazepine use was associated with accelerated volume loss of the hippocampus and to a lesser extent amygdala. 

“Our results indicate that benzodiazepine use may have a subtle, long-term impact on brain health, although we found no evidence of a dose–response relationship,” the authors write.

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