Are You Taking Any of These 5 Common Medications Linked to Lower Dementia Risk?

Medications for conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, or high cholesterol could have more benefits than just treating the diseases they're prescribed for.

“To say that a medication prevents dementia, we ideally need randomized controlled trials, where people without dementia are randomly assigned to treatment or control and followed over time,” explains Mozhu Ding, PhD, a geriatric epidemiologist and an assistant professor at the Institute of Environmental Medicine at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, who has researched medications and dementia. “Even then, dementia is difficult to study because it develops slowly, so trials need long follow-up and enough dementia cases to detect an effect.”

1. Blood Pressure Medications

“The evidence for antihypertensives [reducing dementia risk] is among the strongest,” says Serena Jingchuan Guo, MD, PhD, an associate professor at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, who has researched the relationship between medications and dementia. “But this applies mainly to people with hypertension — not to people with normal blood pressure taking medication solely for brain protection.”

2. GLP-1 Medications

“I think people are excited about these drugs based on animal studies and observational research,” says Amalia Peterson, MD, a behavioral neurologist and an assistant professor of neurology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. “There is promise for GLP-1 medications, but we’re still learning about them, so we do have to be cautious, because correlation is not the same as causation.”

“GLP-1s remain promising for brain health, especially through cardiometabolic pathways, but they are not established dementia-prevention or Alzheimer’s-treatment drugs,” Dr. Guo says.

3. Statins

“So far, cardiovascular drugs overall are the most studied in relation to dementia risk, including medications used to treat high blood pressure, atrial fibrillation, and high lipid levels,” says Dr. Ding. The reason these have gained such attention is because the research has established strong connections between cardiovascular diseases and dementia, she explains.

“The evidence is not as strong as it is for blood pressure medications,” says Natasha Bhuyan, MD, a family physician who specializes in reproductive health at One Medical in Scottsdale, Arizona. “Some studies show that statins might have a moderate impact on dementia risk, which could be due to reducing inflammation and stabilizing blood vessels. But they shouldn’t be taken by people who don’t need them.”

4. Routine Vaccines

Researchers are still working to understand the connection, but one theory is that vaccines may lower dementia risk by preventing infections that can trigger chronic inflammation and damage to the brain and blood vessels. “These are observational studies, so we can’t make a definitive conclusion, but [the shingles vaccine] has the most compelling and large-scale evidence,” Dr. Bhuyan says, noting that the shingles infection could damage brain cells and blood vessels. “So by preventing the infection, we are preventing the risk of dementia.”

Guo agrees that the findings are encouraging but should be interpreted cautiously, noting that vaccines should be taken according to public health recommendations, but not as proven dementia-prevention drugs.

5. SGLT2 Inhibitors

Guo says for people with type 2 diabetes, the findings that diabetes medications may contribute to lower dementia risk are promising, but not definitive. “However, randomized trial evidence remains limited, and we cannot assume the effect applies to people without diabetes,” she says.

Bhuyan agrees. “The evidence is not as strong here,” she says. “These medications likely have an impact on both blood sugar control and reducing the risk of heart failure, but they do not help people without diabetes.”