We Ranked Every Dementia Treatment by What It’s Actually Worth. Here’s Who Won
After running a full economic evaluation on five widely used medications and comparing them against seven non-drug interventions, Robert J. Brent’s research on dementia care lands on a genuine surprise finalist: statins. Yes, the same cholesterol medication tens of millions of people already take for heart health turns out, in this analysis, to be the […]
The Cheapest Pill in Your Medicine Cabinet Might Be the Best Dementia Treatment Around
Three medications into Robert J. Brent’s economic analysis of dementia treatments, the pattern wasn’t looking good. FDA-approved Alzheimer’s drugs: net loss. Beta-blockers: net loss. Antipsychotics: the biggest loss of all. Then came the fourth medication class, and for the first time in the entire study, the math actually worked. That medication class is one almost […]
The Medication the FDA Already Warned Against, and Nursing Homes Still Use
Of every medication examined in Robert J. Brent’s new economic analysis of dementia treatments, one stands out as the most damaging by a wide margin: antipsychotics. That might not shock anyone who’s followed the headlines. The FDA has issued a “black box” warning, its strongest warning, against using antipsychotics for dementia-related symptoms. Human Rights Watch […]
Your Blood Pressure Pills Might Be Helping Your Brain and Hurting Your Heart at the Same Time
Beta-blockers are about as ordinary as medications get. Tens of millions of people take them for high blood pressure, and most never think twice about it. So it might come as a surprise that when economist Robert J. Brent ran the numbers on beta-blockers and dementia, he found a genuinely split result one that’s almost […]
The Dementia Drugs Millions Take and the Data That Says They’re Backfiring
Here’s an uncomfortable thought experiment. Imagine a medication that’s FDA-approved, prescribed to millions of people with dementia, and has been the standard of care for decades. Now imagine new research suggesting that, on average, it doesn’t reduce dementia symptoms at all and may be shortening lives instead. That’s exactly what economist Robert J. Brent found […]
The Math Teacher Test: Why Your Brain Scan Can’t Tell You If You Have Dementia
Picture a high school math teacher on a free period. She’s been forgetting things lately, so she slips out to get an MRI. Later that day, the doctor calls with “bad news”: the scan shows amyloid plaques, the classic marker doctors look for when they diagnose Alzheimer’s. She’s shaken, but she still has a class […]