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Treating the full spectrum of dementia with memantine
Author(s) -
Winblad Bengt,
Jelic Vesna
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
international journal of geriatric psychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.28
H-Index - 129
eISSN - 1099-1166
pISSN - 0885-6230
DOI - 10.1002/gps.937
Subject(s) - memantine , dementia , vascular dementia , disease , medicine , clinical trial , alzheimer's disease , severe dementia , epidemiology , psychiatry , intensive care medicine , pediatrics
An increasing number of elderly people result in increased social and economical impact of dementia, particularly its most common form Alzheimer's disease (AD). Dementia itself consists of a wide spectrum of disease, ranging from the mild cognitive impairment that progresses through several clinical milestones to advanced dementia. Drugs available at the moment on the market are approved for the treatment of mild to moderate dementia and their symptomatic effect is based on cholinergic substitution. However, the largest amount of costs utilised for dementia is institutional care for severely affected patients. At this stage of the disease both vascular and degenerative mechanisms contribute to the clinical expression of the disease. Recent clinical trials with the antiglutamatergic drug memantine have shown that cognitive benefit could be observed in patients with vascular dementia and reduced care dependence in those with moderately severe to severe form of the disease. The later findings are results from the M‐BEST study, which is briefly rewieved here with some of the epidemiological, socioeconomical and clinical implications of such therapy. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.