Drug use and cognitive function in residents of homes for the elderly

In order to investigate the relationship between cognitive function and daily used drugs in the elderly we performed an observational, cross-sectional study in 5 homes for the elderly in the region of Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Participants were 497 residents of these homes. For all these subjects the daily used drugs, classified according to the Anatomical Therapeutic Classification system, were registered and global cognitive function was measured as the total score on the Mini Mental State Examination. Adjusting for age and education, there was a small but significant and positive correlation between the use of metoprolol and the total MMSE score. The use of CNS drugs was not related to the total MMSE score. All eleven most frequently used drugs together explained 2.9% of the variance in the MMSE scores. These results indicate that there is a negligible association between daily drug use and cognitive function in these subjects.