FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WOWO) — Common medications used to treat osteoporosis were associated with a significantly lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias in a large study of older adults, although researchers caution the findings do not prove the drugs prevent dementia.
The study, published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia, examined 121,492 adults age 60 and older in Hong Kong who had recently been diagnosed with osteoporosis or suffered a serious fracture involving the spine, upper arm, wrist or hip. None had previously taken osteoporosis medication.
Researchers focused on nitrogen-containing bisphosphonates, or NBPs, a class of drugs that slows bone loss and helps reduce the risk of fractures. Common medications in that group include alendronate, ibandronate, risedronate and zoledronate.
People who took an NBP had a 16-percent lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease or a related dementia compared with people who did not take osteoporosis medications.
The risk was 24 percent lower when compared with people taking other types of osteoporosis drugs.
The findings add to growing research into what scientists describe as a possible connection between bone and brain health.
Ching-Lung Cheung, an associate professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacy at the University of Hong Kong’s Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine and an author of the study, told Fox News Digital that emerging evidence points to a “bone-brain axis.”
Cheung said previous research has found that people with low bone mass or osteoporosis are more likely to develop dementia later in life, potentially highlighting the importance of maintaining bone health as people age.
Osteoporosis is a condition in which bones become weaker because of loss of bone mass, increasing the risk of fractures. It is particularly common among older adults.
But the researchers stressed that the new findings do not establish a cause-and-effect relationship.
The study was observational, meaning researchers examined existing health information and associations rather than assigning patients to receive specific treatments.
“Our findings therefore do not prove that bisphosphonate use reduces dementia risk,” Cheung told Fox News Digital, adding that the findings need to be confirmed in a clinical trial.
There are also questions about whether the results would apply to other populations because the study involved only Chinese patients.
Researchers said they also did not have cognitive testing from the beginning of the study. That creates the possibility that some participants already had cognitive impairment, which could have affected whether they received osteoporosis treatment.
The study also lacked information about the severity of participants’ osteoporosis and fractures, as well as their use of over-the-counter calcium and vitamin D supplements.
Other factors that can affect dementia risk were not fully accounted for, including education, social isolation, air pollution and vision loss.
Cheung said the findings do not currently justify prescribing bisphosphonates specifically to prevent or treat Alzheimer’s disease or dementia.
Instead, the researchers are calling for additional studies involving broader populations and for research examining whether sex or other factors influence the apparent association.
“The next step is to confirm our observational findings in a clinical trial,” Cheung said. If a benefit is eventually demonstrated, he said, it could have important implications for dementia management.
For now, the findings suggest a potential connection between medications already used to protect bone health and brain health, but researchers say more evidence is needed before the drugs could be considered a dementia-prevention treatment.
