Brexpiprazole side-effect profile in people with agitation in Alzheimer's dementia: a plain language summary.

What is this summary about?Alzheimer’s dementia is a disorder of the brain. People living with Alzheimer’s dementia have a slow decline of their thinking, memory, and behavior. Agitation is common among people living with Alzheimer’s dementia, and can show in different ways such as restlessness, repetitive questions, wandering, shouting, swearing, and kicking. Brexpiprazole is a medicine used to treat agitation in people living with Alzheimer’s dementia. Many types of medicine can cause harmful side effects when they are used by older people living with dementia. Therefore, researchers decided to have a detailed look at the side effects of brexpiprazole over 3 months and 6 months of use. Researchers combined information from four previous clinical studies of brexpiprazole in people with agitation in Alzheimer’s dementia.What are the key takeaways?Side effects were reported by roughly 1 in 2 people (around 50%) treated with brexpiprazole, over 3 months and over 6 months. This was slightly higher than in people taking placebo (a pretend medicine) over 3 months. The number of people with side effects like stroke, heart problems, movement-related (extrapyramidal) symptoms, sleepiness, infections, dizziness, and falls were generally similar between brexpiprazole and placebo.What are the main conclusions reported by the researchers?No new or unexpected safety problems were found in people with agitation in Alzheimer’s dementia who were taking brexpiprazole, even when it was taken for up to 6 months. These results, combined with previous results showing that brexpiprazole can improve agitation, suggest that brexpiprazole may be a helpful treatment for people with agitation in Alzheimer’s dementia.[Box: see text][Box: see text][Box: see text]Link to original article hereTrial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT01862640; NCT01922258; NCT03548584; NCT03594123.