Anticholinergic Medications and Cognitive Function in Late Midlife.

We investigated the cross-sectional association between anticholinergics and cognitive function in persons aged ≥ 50 years. Participants underwent neurological examination, neuropsychological testing and were classified into two groups: Those taking (AC+, N = 51) versus not taking anticholinergics (AC−, N = 204). AC+ were comparable to AC− participants by age, sex and education. There was a trend for worse performance in all memory and most executive function tests for AC+, but only the difference in the Paced Auditory Serial Attention Task 2 was significant. There was no dose-effect relationship between anticholinergic use and cognitive test scores. Results were not impacted by APOE ε4 status. In conclusion, we observed a significant difference between AC+ and AC− groups in only one measure of executive function. Thus anticholinergic medications do not appear to impact cognition in this relatively younger sample of late mid-life individuals. A longitudinal study is needed to confirm these findings.