Painkillers and dementia
Q: Did you see that ibuprofen prevents dementia?
A: No
Q: Common 3p anti-inflammatory pill ‘can help prevent dementia’ says new study. And Prolonged Use Of Anti-Inflammatory Pills May Help Prevent Dementia: Study. And…
A: No
Q: Those quotes in the first headline imply someone really said it
A: Well, that used to be the convention, but apparently not in this case.
Q: Mice?
A: No, not mice. People
Q: Correlations, or randomised trials?
A: Correlations
Q: Is there a paper?
A: There is a paper.
Q: Has anyone looked at this correlation before?
A: Oh my yes. So many people. There are even randomised trials. The Cochrane Review says “no evidence that it works, and it may be dangerous”
Q: What do the scientists say about that?
A: The trials were too short to show the effect, or they started too late in the disease process.
Q: Is that possible?
A: Sure, it’s possible. Lots of things are possible.
Q: So you don’t believe the paper?
A: It’s a perfectly reasonable paper for consenting scientists in private (I know some of the authors), but it doesn’t justify the recommendation of long-term treatment with these drugs for the prevention of dementia, especially given the potential adverse effects
Q: Well, that’s your opinion. What do the scientists who wrote the paper say?
A: Our results.. do not justify the recommendation of long-term treatment with NSAIDs for the prevention of dementia, given its potential adverse effects.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
Well spotted and outlined. This is the sort of media behaviour that should routinely go to some kind of media complaints mechanism.
1 month ago
How about NSAIDs and cancer? This story has been repeated in numerous news sources this week (but I didn’t find anything in NZ news) https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1d4n119xr7o
1 month ago
I think there’s a bit more biology there — it helps that we do have some idea of how cancer works — but again it’s not clear if the correlation is causal
4 weeks ago