In this episode, we speak with Dr. Matthew Growdon about medications for memory loss in older adults. We cover cholinesterase inhibitors for memory loss in older adults, their efficacy in Alzheimer’s dementia as well as other dementia etiologies, their efficacy in mild cognitive impairment, the NMDA receptor antagonist memantine, combination therapies, how to talk to patients about these medications, how to write about them in neuropsych reports, and we end with a brief discussion of aducanumab.
A pdf of the transcript for this episode is available here.
About Matthew
Matthew E. Growdon, MD, MPH is a geriatrician and T32 Postdoctoral Fellow in Aging Research in the Division of Geriatrics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), which he will join as an Assistant Professor in July 2022. Dr. Growdon’s research is focused on improving the quality and safety of prescribing for older adults, with an emphasis on those with cognitive impairment and social vulnerability. Dr. Growdon attended Harvard College, studying History and Literature, and received his medical school training at Harvard Medical School and his MPH with an emphasis on quantitative methods from Harvard School of Public Health. He completed residency in internal medicine and primary care at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He subsequently completed a clinical geriatrics fellowship in the Harvard Medical School Multicampus Geriatric Medicine Fellowship, a chief residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the Advanced Training in Clinical Research Certificate Program at UCSF. He is the recent recipient of a two-year NIH AHRQ Learning Health Systems K12 grant (July 2022-June 2024), through which he is leading projects aiming to improve opportunities for deprescribing potentially inappropriate medications for older adults receiving primary care at UCSF Health. Clinically, Dr. Growdon works as a consulting geriatrician at UCSF Medical Center, assisting various surgical services with the medical co-management of frail, older adults.