The Food and Drug Administration has issued a warning to physicians about the increase in death risk to seniors who are administered antipsychotic drugs. These drugs are used to treat behavioral problems seen in patients with dementia.

These patients can exhibit symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations, aggression and an increase in violent behavior. The antipsychotic drugs are of two types, conventional such as Thorazine and Prolixin and atypical such as Zyprexa and Risperdal. Both these work by blocking the action of dopamine in the brain, the basic difference being fewer side effects in the atypical antipsychotics.

These drugs are approved to treat patients suffering from schizophrenia and bipolar disease but doctors are now recommending these to patients with dementia as well. The physicians are being advised to discuss the risks and possible side effects, such as higher risk of heart attacks and pneumonia with the families before recommending these drugs.

The drug will now carry a black box warning. This will be one of the first uses by the Food and Drug Agency Amendments Act of 2007, which gives the FDA authority to mandate drug warnings which earlier they could only request for.

A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine in May, by Canadian researchers found that elderly patients given atypical drugs to treat dementia were 3.2 times more likely to be hospitalized or die than those who received no drug in a 30 day follow up.