Anticholinergic Burden and Risk for Mild Cognitive Impairment

To analyze whether anticholinergic medications are associated with risk for mild cognitive impairment (MCI), researchers tracked 688 cognitively normal participants (mean age, 73 years; about 50% male) from the Alzheimer Disease Neuroimaging Initiative for 10 years. Presence of anticholinergic medication use (aCH+) or its absence (aCH−) was based on self-report and the Anticholinergic Cognitive Burden (ACB) scale. High aCH+ was defined as use of ≥1 medication with ACB score >1. Outcomes included incident MCI and cognitive performance on memory, executive-function, and language testing.

The 230 aCH+ participants used an average of 4.7 aCH medications, most commonly metoprolol, atenolol, loratadine, and bupropion and mostly above the minimum e…