Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

More than 1,000,000 Canadians will be diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease (AD) by the year 2038, and there is no clear consensus regarding the use of the medications used for its treatment. The uptake of AD medications has been rapid, despite insufficient information pertaining to their use in a real-world clinical setting. While these medications aim to manage symptoms, these drugs have no substantial impact on disease. The objective of this study was to describe the age, sex and other medical factors related to receiving a prescription for an AD medication. We assembled a cohort of all patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease within the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD), a well-validated database with general practitioner data from the UK, during the period between April 1, 1997 and March 31, 2017. No differences were seen between men and women. One drug (memantine) was more commonly used in vascular dementia than other types of dementia, in older people, and in people diagnosed more recently. This study was the largest population-based study, with nearly 20 years of patient follow-up.