Articles / Can lithium prevent dementia?
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Scientia Professor of Neuropsychiatry, Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing (CHeBA), School of Psychiatry, UNSW
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These are activities that expand general practice knowledge, skills and attitudes, related to your scope of practice.
These are activities that require reflection on feedback about your work.
These are activities that use your work data to ensure quality results.
When people think of lithium, it’s usually to do with batteries, but lithium also has a long history in medicine. Lithium carbonate, or lithium salt, is mainly used to treat and prevent bipolar disorder. This is a condition in which a person experiences significant mood swings from highs that can tip into mania to lows that can plunge into depression.
More recently, though, lithium has been explored as a potential preventive therapy for dementia. A recent paper even led some to question whether we should start putting lithium in drinking water to lower population dementia rates.
But despite early studies linking lithium to better cognitive function, there is currently not enough evidence to start using it as a preventive dementia strategy.
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Scientia Professor of Neuropsychiatry, Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing (CHeBA), School of Psychiatry, UNSW
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