According to alarming study, a common medication used to treat lower back pain may increase the risk of dementia by as much as 40%.
In the early 1990s, the NHS licensed gabapentin, also known as Neurontin, to treat epilepsy and nerve pain.
However, US researchers discovered that patients of any age who had been administered the drug at least six times had a 29% higher chance of getting memory robbing condition. The pill is normally taken three times a day.
For those who had been administered it more than 12 times, this risk increased to 40%.
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According to the findings, individuals who were administered gabapentin should now have their cognitive decline evaluated, according to the experts from Case Western Reserve University in Ohio.
However, they warned that the results only demonstrate a correlation and do not establish that using the medication will result in dementia.
According to experts today, gabapentin may not be the cause of chronic pain in those who need it because they may have simply been less physically active, which is a known risk factor for dementia.
Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), a chemical messenger in the brain that works as a brake on overexcited nerve cells, is the target of the medication, which is produced by the pharmaceutical behemoth Pfizer, best known for the Covid vaccination.
According to the most recent NHS data, gabapentin prescriptions in England decreased little from their peak of 926,071 in 2022–2023 to 799,155 in 2023–2024.
According to statistics, about 8 million prescriptions for gabapentin are written in the US each year.
More than 26,000 Americans who had been treated gabapentin for persistent low pain between 2004 and 2024 had their medical records evaluated by researchers for the study.
They discovered that after ten years of receiving a pain diagnosis, people who had taken six or more gabapentin prescriptions had a 29% higher chance of being diagnosed with dementia and an 85% higher chance of being diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI).
Sometimes a diagnosis of dementia is preceded by MCI.
The risk of dementia more than quadrupled and MCI more than tripled among those aged 35 to 49 who were administered the medication, although there was no increased risk among those aged 18 to 34.
The researchers discovered that patients who received 12 or more medications were even more vulnerable.
Compared to patients who were prescribed gabapentin three to eleven times, these patients had a forty percent higher risk of developing dementia and a sixty-five percent higher risk of developing MCI.
Writing in the journal Regional Anesthesia & Pain Medicine, they said, “Our findings indicate an association between gabapentin prescription and dementia or cognitive impairment within 10 years.”
They added: “Our results support the need for close monitoring of adult patients prescribed gabapentin to assess for potential cognitive decline.”
Independent experts, however, cautioned today about the results.
They pointed out that it was yet unclear how the medication might be affecting dementia.
Alzheimer’s Research UK’s head of clinical research, Dr. Leah Mursaleen, stated that although the study had certain advantages, such as a sizable sample size, it also had drawbacks.
“This study only shows an association between gabapentin prescriptions and mild cognitive impairment or dementia, so we do not know if the medication is directly causing the higher risk,” she said.
“Gabapentin dosage wasn’t recorded, and there was no information on how long people were on the medication.”
“Because this study only used health records of people with chronic pain, we cannot rule out other factors that might be influencing the findings.”
“And previous studies looking at people prescribed gabapentin for other conditions like seizures, didn’t show a link between the medication and higher dementia risk.”
She went on to say that anyone who has questions concerning their medicine should consult their general practitioner.
Professor Tara Spires-Jones, director of the Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh and group leader at the UK Dementia Research Institute, also said, “One very important factor that was not examined in this study is levels of physical activity.”
“People with chronic pain requiring gabapentin may have been less physically active, which is a known risk factor for developing dementia.”
Five Britons, their families, or doctors have connected gabapentin use to a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s or dementia, according to official data obtained by MailOnline.
These reports, which were filed with the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, may simply be coincidental and do not establish that the drug was the cause.
It comes after a groundbreaking study last year revealed that addressing 14 childhood lifestyle factors could prevent nearly half of all Alzheimer’s cases.
Experts from around the world discovered that two new risk factors—having high cholesterol and having visual loss—together were responsible for about 10% of dementia cases worldwide.
They join 12 other characteristics that specialists have shown to increase the risk of dementia, ranging from smoking status to heredity.
The study, which was published in the esteemed journal The Lancet, gave experts more hope than “ever before” that the memory-robbing condition that plagues millions of people’s lives can be addressed, according to experts.
In the United Kingdom, 982,000 people suffer with Alzheimer’s disease, the most prevalent type of dementia.
Language issues, cognitive and reasoning challenges, and memory issues are typical early symptoms of the illness that progressively get worse.
According to an analysis by Alzheimer’s Research UK, dementia was the leading cause of death in the nation in 2022, accounting for 74,261 deaths, up from 69,178 the year before.
