PPIs Not Linked to Cognitive Decline in New Study of Twins

A study of more than 7,800 middle-aged and senior twins in Denmark published in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology did not find an association between long-term use of proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) and cognitive decline, reports Healio . "Follow-up data on more than 4,000 of these twins did not indicate that use of this class of drugs was correlated to cognitive decline," the researchers note. "These findings were supported by results of within pairs analyses of twins discordant for cognitive scores (baseline) or cognitive decline (follow-up)." Twins in the older cohort who consumed high levels of PPIs exhibited higher adjusted cognitive scores than non-users, and a lower adjusted mean difference between baseline and follow-up scores than non-users. Still, none of the differences in cognitive scores between PPI users and non-users were statistically significant. "As the cohorts were recruited among Danish twins, we also investigated the association between PPI use and cognition among twin-pairs discordant with regard to cognitive decline — a powerful design to study the effects of non-genetic and non-common environment exposures," the researchers say. PPI exposure revealed no correlation with differences in cognitive scores among twin pairs, while post hoc analysis found no association between H2RA use and cognitive decline. "The magnitude of estimates did not indicate any important association with cognitive function as measured through the composite score, and none of our adjusted estimates reported a statistically significant effect in the longitudinal analyses," the team notes. "In addition, there did not seem to be a clear dose-response effect in any analyses."