by nostrebored 9 hours ago
Daily allergy tablets are associated with huge increases in early onset Alzheimer’s. Glad you found something that works, but might be good to get some of the allergen injections :)
That seems to be only for first generation, drowsy-making, tablets. Second gen formulas don't cross over the blood/brain barrier.
https://www.myalzteam.com/resources/zyrtec-and-alzheimers-me...
There IS one year-old finding that suddenly stopping Zyrtec after daily 3-month use may lead to nasty itching, and if that happens you can re-start and then taper off. https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-communications/fda-req...
Where are getting that from?
All I can find is about 1st gen antihistamines (i.e. Benadryl, which I doubt many people take daily, because of the drowsiness).
Even for those, evidence seems to be mixed at best. "Huge increases" seems like hyperbole.
Only first gen, 2nd gen does not have this issue anymore or it’s greatly reduced
Misinformation.
Only first-generation antihistamines with anticholinergic effects are associated with cognitive decline in elderly patients.
LMAO at how the two of you sound authoritative and knowledgeable, but neither linked to ANY studies (or at least personal anecdotes) to support your claims.
Yet here we are, warning each other about the dangers of LLM hallucinations. Humans "hallucinate" (provide random authoritative-looking information without anything to back it up) pretty often too.
I believe it depends on which ones, the older gen or certain classes of antihistamines
Wait, what?? Now I'm getting in panic mode because I do take regularly anti-hystaminic tablets/pills (the newer ones, based on ebastine because they don't make me feel sleepy)
You don't seem to need to worry, second gen tablets seem to be fine: https://claude.ai/share/9c6eaaa5-e734-4267-b540-ddc0188daf6b
Posting a claude chat is not actually helpful. The chat doesnt't even cite any sources.
I think this post is a decent summary, the answer is a soft maybe: https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/should-i-worry-...
Second-gen tablets might increase dementia risk by a small-to-medium amount (there's almost certainly still a small degree of CNS activity, and we don't know what causes dementia in the first place), but researching it will be difficult. Dementia is hard to research because of how long it takes to develop, and it's poor coding within health data, and antihistamines are hard to research because they're not often prescribed and aren't available in the health data.
If it's a large effect, those factors wouldn't matter, but smaller risks are harder to detect and more sensitive to bias. If you want to minimise dementia risk, then reducing antihistamine use might be warranted, but you're probably better off addressing the risk factors we do know about: https://www.dementia.org.au/brain-health/risk-factors-develo...