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Cognitive effects of long‐term benzodiazepine use in older adults
Author(s) -
Pat McAndrews Mary,
Weiss Rachel T.,
Sandor Paul,
Taylor Ann,
Carlen Peter L.,
Shapiro Colin M.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
human psychopharmacology: clinical and experimental
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.461
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1099-1077
pISSN - 0885-6222
DOI - 10.1002/hup.453
Subject(s) - benzodiazepine , cognition , discontinuation , effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive performance , audiology , sedative , psychology , medicine , affect (linguistics) , working memory , psychiatry , receptor , communication
This study examined the potential for cognitive morbidity associated with the long‐term use of benzodiazepine (BZ) sedative‐hypnotics in a sample of healthy older adults. Tests of memory, attention and processing speed were conducted prior to and 1 month after drug discontinuation for 25 BZ‐users and at similar intervals for 26 healthy control subjects. After controlling for differences in affective status between BZ‐users and controls, there were no significant group differences in cognitive performance. However, BZ‐users showed greater gains on tests of attention and speed of processing at repeat testing compared with controls this improvement was not attributable to a change in affective status. These findings suggest that there may be subtle and reversible effects of long‐term BZ use on speed‐dependent tasks in older adults. However, the magnitude of these effects is quite small and may be of little clinical significance in the healthy elderly. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.