‘Chemical cosh’ antipsychotics—drugs that subdue dementia patients in care homes and hospitals—are far more dangerous than everyone thought.
The drugs increase the risk of stroke, heart attack, heart failure, fractures and acute kidney injury, and nobody seemed to know it.
Although it’s common knowledge the drugs are dangerous and were supposed to be used sparingly, their use increased by around 50 percent during the Covid pandemic in care homes.
But the full extent of the harm the drugs can cause had never been fully recorded, say researchers from Manchester University, who tracked around 174,000 dementia patients diagnosed between 1998 and 2018. They compared each of the 35,000 patients prescribed an antipsychotic against up to 15 others who weren’t taking the drug.
The researchers discovered that, after just three months, the drugs increased the risk of a heart attack by 25 percent and doubled the risk of pneumonia. The drugs also increased the risk of stroke by 61 percent and a fracture by 43 percent. Patients taking the drugs were also 72 percent more likely to suffer kidney injury and had a 62 percent raised risk of developing a venous thromboembolism, a blood clot in a vein.
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