Painkillers No Help, Study Finds

CHICAGO – Results from a large government experiment are dimming hopes that two common painkillers can prevent Alzheimer’s disease or slow mental decline in older people.

The arthritis drug Celebrex and the over-the-counter painkiller Aleve showed no benefit on thinking skills, new findings show. Earlier results from the same research showed the two drugs didn’t prevent Alzheimer’s, at least in the short term.

The experiment was halted several years early in 2004, when heart risks turned up in a separate study on Celebrex. Researchers also had noticed more heart attacks and strokes in the people taking Aleve in the Alzheimer’s prevention study.

The findings were posted online Monday and will appear in July’s Archives of Neurology. Researchers hope to continue monitoring the participants to see whether they find any delayed benefit.

Scientists have speculated that nonsteroidal anti- inflammatories, such as Aleve and Celebrex, might prevent Alzheimer’s by reducing inflammation in the brain or by other means.

“The drugs have several effects in the brain, and the different effects could be important at different stages in the illness,” said study co-author John Breitner of the University of Washington in Seattle.

Previous studies found that people who took the drugs ran a lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s. But those were observational studies, meaning they observed behavior and health. Those people might have had other healthy habits that lowered risk.

The study included more than 2,000 people 70 and older with a family history of Alzheimer’s but no thinking problems themselves. People were assigned to take daily doses of either Celebrex; Aleve, also known as naproxen; or a dummy pill.

Originally published by Associated Press.

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