The findings support current guidelines on the use of this class of drugs, which caution against using benzodiazepines for extended periods of time.
Despite these concerns, evidence suggests that between 6% and 15% of patients prescribed benzodiazepines use the drugs for more than six months. The team found that around 50% of study participants had used benzodiazepines at some point up to 2008, and approximately 13% of the overall group went on to be diagnosed with dementia by 2020. Notably, the people who took benzodiazepines were no more likely to develop dementia than those who'd never taken them, regardless of how much they took and for how long, the team found.
Based on these scans, the researchers concluded that benzodiazepine use was associated with an accelerated reduction in the volume of the hippocampus and amygdala. In other words, these structures shrunk faster in the group who took benzos, compared to the group who had not used the drugs.