Should you consider available formulations of lithium to reduce dementia risk? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Lithium may reduce dementia risk. That’s the take home from a recent study in mice that garnered a lot of attention. Constantine Lyketsos, a dementia expert at Johns Hopkins, says caveat emptor. 

Lyketsos: I don't believe they had any human experiments, they were all mouse based. I will add that lithium that we use clinically for bipolar disorder there is some observational EPI to suggest that people who take it are less likely to get dementia, but then there's a real survivor effect because most people who take it have bipolar disorder and so maybe they don't live long enough to get dementia. And lithium is not an easy drug, it's a dangerous drug. It's got a narrow therapeutic index especially if they take it even though we warned them with the non steroidals.   :33

Lyketsos says he has had inquiries from people at risk for dementia on taking the same medicine that’s used in people with bipolar disorder, to which he answers a resounding no. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.