Prescribing of dementia drugs 失智藥物

2025 04 12 Owen Yang

The main stream of Antidementia drugs, Anticholinesterases (or acetylcholinesterase inhibitors [ACEI], #N06DA), has been around since before 2000, and therefore the increasing of prescribing over time (2005-2020) should mainly reflect the increase in diagnosis and prevalence.

The second line drug, Memantine (#N06DX01), has been classified in Prescribing in Taiwan under another group Other antidementia drugs (#N06DX), but this group also includes another drug Ginkgo folium (#N06DX02). They are grouped without we knowing the fact that Ginkgo folium has been precribed for peripheral artery diseases. The relatively high prescribing rates and the age distribution of this ATC drug group could be the mix between Ginkgo folium and Memanatin.

This is labelled as one of the hindsights and the two drugs will be treated separately when there is an update of Precribing in Taiwan.