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Antipsychotics often are prescribed to older patients with dementia for agitation, hallucinations, or delusions, despite a black-box warning that these agents are associated with excess risk for premature death in this population. These drugs also have been associated with various other health risks in such patients.
To produce a comprehensive estimate of the potential harms associated with antipsychotics in people with dementia, investigators used British databases to identify 25,000 older adults who were diagnosed with dementia and were prescribed antipsychotics during a 10-year period; these patients were matched with 340,000 patients with diagnosed dementia who were not prescribed antipsychotics.
In adjusted analyses, users were significa…