An observational study in Alzheimer Dementia and Dementia Disorders, sponsored by Karolinska Institutet. Completed at 1 site in Sweden. Open to participants aged 40 Years and older. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2025-05-02.
Sponsored by Karolinska Institutet · Observational
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.
2,172 studies on the registry are indexed under Dementia; 540 are open to participants now.
This study's enrollment of 100,000 is above the median of 250 across 482 observational studies indexed under Dementia.
Browse Dementia studies →Karolinska Institutet is the lead sponsor of 1,113 studies on the registry; 267 are open to participants now.
Counted across the registry records on this site, refreshed daily.
This study includes >100,000 patients in SveDem and ca. 144,000 measures of Mini-mental State Examination (MMSE) including base registration and follow-ups. Our current merged dataset contains 80,004 individuals, but we periodically conduct new merges which will increase the sample size in the future: this may be necessary for rarer medications.
All patients with dementia registered in SveDem.
Exclusion Criteria:
Lack of Swedish personal identification number or coordination number.
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.
Other: No intervention
No intervention was applied
Cognitive decline
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.
Time frame: Through study completion, at least 1 year
Rate of nursing home placement
Data will be obtained from the social services registry.
Time frame: Through study completion, at least 1 year
Mortality
Data about date and cause(s) of death will be collected from The Cause of Death Register.
Time frame: Through study completion, at least 1 year
Plan to share: No
This study is completed, as verified in Apr 2023. You cannot join it, but the record below documents what was studied.
Get an email when the registry record changes — status, dates, results — or when someone posts here.
Sign in to followQuestions and observations about this study, from anyone following it. Not medical advice, and not a channel to the study team — their contact details are on the registry record.
Sign in to join the discussion. Reading takes no account; posting does. You choose a display name, and a pseudonym is the default.
Nothing here yet. If you are running this trial, taking part in it, or weighing whether to, this is the place to say so.
Karolinska Institutet