Antibiotic Use Not Linked to Incident Dementia, Cognitive Impairment

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 18, 2024 (HealthDay News) — Any or repeated use of antibiotics is not associated with incident dementia, cognitive impairment/no dementia (CIND), or accelerated cognitive decline among initially healthy older adults, according to a study published online Dec. 18 in Neurology.

Yiqing Wang, Ph.D., from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, and colleagues leveraged data from prospective follow-up and observational extension of ASPirin in Reducing Events in the Elderly to examine the prospective association of antibiotics with cognitive aging among initially healthy older adults. The associations of antibiotic use during the first two years of follow-up were assessed with longitudinal changes in standardized composite and domain-specific cognitive scores and with incident clinically adjudicated dementia and incident CIND.

The researchers documented 461 dementia and 2,576 CIND cases among 13,571 participants during a median of 4.7 years after the second follow-up visit. Antibiotic use was not associated with increased risks for dementia, CIND, or subsequent declines in cognitive scores compared with nonuse, after adjustment for sociodemographics, lifestyle factors, family history of dementia, baseline cognitive function, and medications known to affect cognition. No associations were seen according to cumulative frequency of antibiotic use, long-term use, specific antibiotic classes, and subgroups defined by risk factors.

“Our findings provide reassurance that episodic antibiotic use in cognitively intact, community-dwelling older adults is unlikely to lead to future impairment in cognitive function,” the authors write.

Two authors disclosed ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

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