Medication Repurposing to Stop Cognitive Decline in Dementia

Completed

• Conditions: Alzheimer Dementia; Dementia Disorders
• Interventions: Other: No intervention

• Registration Number: NCT05817188
• Lead Sponsor: Karolinska Institutet

Brief Summary

Dementia creates a great personal and societal burden and there are currently no treatments to stop memory loss. Many patients with dementia take medications to treat other conditions, e.g. high blood pressure and cholesterol. Some of these medications may have central effects on the pathophysiological processes leading to dementia.

Medication repurposing is a cost and time-effective way to discover new treatments. Swedish registers are a unique tool to detect medication candidates for repurposing. The Swedish Dementia Registry (SveDem) has \>100000 patients and ca. 144000 measures of cognition over time (measured with the Mini-Mental State Examination-MMSE), making it perfect to examine whether certain medications are associated with less cognitive decline in patients with dementia. Cholesterol and kidney function affect treatment and cognition and are available for 25000 patients. The investigators propose a study combining traditional cohort studies and newer artificial intelligence (machine learning) techniques to detect medications associated with slower cognitive decline in patients from SveDem. The investigators will test pre-specified hypotheses since the investigators suspect specific medications are better candidates to prevent cognitive decline, but the investigators will also let the machine learning algorithms explore the data to find associations that the investigators do not suspect in advance. Finally, the candidate medications will be tested in animal and cellular models to determine the mechanisms of their effects.

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2023-01-01
• Status Verified: 2023-04
• Study First Submitted: 2023-04-04
• Study First Submitted QC: 2023-04-04
• Study First Posted: 2023-04-18
• Primary Completion: 2025-03-01
• Study Completion: 2025-03-01
• Last Update Submitted: 2025-04-29
• Last Update Posted: 2025-05-02

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: COMPLETED
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 100000

Inclusion Criteria

All patients with dementia registered in SveDem.

Exclusion Criteria

Lack of Swedish personal identification number or coordination number.

Study & Design

• Study Type: OBSERVATIONAL
• Study Design: Not specified

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Dementia patients	No intervention	This register-based project will include all patients diagnosed with dementia and registered in the Swedish Registry for Cognitive/Dementia Diseases. Identification of cases and control and data collation are carried out by Swedish authorities.

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Cognitive decline	Through study completion, at least 1 year	The data on cognitive decline will be assessed by Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) score. The MMSE score ranges from 0 and 30. Higher scores mean a better outcome.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Rate of nursing home placement	Through study completion, at least 1 year	Data will be obtained from the social services registry.
Mortality	Through study completion, at least 1 year	Data about date and cause(s) of death will be collected from The Cause of Death Register.

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

Karolinska Institutet; 🇸🇪 Stockholm, Sweden