Medication-induced Dementia
Home > Blog Letters & Reports > Medication-induced DementiaDrug-induced Dementia is not Alzheimer’s Disease
More than 50 conditions can cause or mimic the symptoms of dementia.”
and “Alzheimer’s (can only be) distinguished from other dementias at
autopsy.” — from a Harvard University Health Publication entitled
“What’s Causing Your Memory Loss? It Isn’t Necessarily Alzheimer’s”
All classes of psychotropic drugs have been documented to damage mitochondria, as have statin
medications, analgesics such as acetaminophen, and many others…
Damage to mitochondria is now understood to play a role in the pathogenesis
of a wide range of seemingly unrelated disorders such as schizophrenia,
bipolar disease, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, migraine headaches,
strokes, neuropathic pain, Parkinson’s disease, ataxia, transient
ischemic attack, cardiomyopathy, coronary artery disease, chronic
fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, retinitis pigmentosa, diabetes,
hepatitis C, and primary biliary cirrhosis.
Medications have now emerged as a major cause of mitochondrial damage,
which may explain many adverse effects” – Neustadt and Pieczenik authors of
“Medication-induced Mitochondrial Damage and Disease”.
“Establishing mitochondrial toxicity is not an FDA requirement for drug
approval, so there is no real way of knowing which agents are truly toxic.”
– Dr. Katherine Sims, Mass General Hospital – http://www.mitoaction.org