AAIC 2019: Sleep medications may increase dementia risk depending on race and gender

Abstracts presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (14–18 July 2019, Los Angeles, CA, USA) have investigated how dementia risk is affected by taking sleep medication in mid- and late-life. Some sleep medications are associated with memory problems and disruption of the body’s sleep-wake cycle. The impact of this type of medication on cognitive decline has not yet been determined. To identify whether there is an association between sleep medication and dementia risk, researchers from Utah State University (UT, USA) performed an observational study on 3656 individuals over the age of 65 who did not have dementia. Over a 12-year...