Memantine?

Leaderoftheband

Any of your spouses / partners on memantine?  How long and have you noticed significant behavior improvement?

ImMaggieMae

Please see my post here: https://www.alzconnected.org/discussion.aspx?g=posts&t=2147561580

There was a later post that I can’t find right now. There were further cognitive improvements like spelling long words, being able to dress himself, etc. over the next couple of months.

In the last two months he’s had 2 UTI’s and was in the hospital for 3 days for a bile duct blockage from a gallstone that resolved on its own. (I stayed at the hospital with him for the 3 days.) He slid back a little during these episodes, not being able to spell long words, like television. He also has had some urinary incontinence  during the day that had gone away for a couple of months. He seems to have bounced back for the most part but still has the incontinence some of the time during the day. (He has had nighttime urinary incontinence for about a year.) He is still at the 15mg per day dose. I have been able to cut back a little on the Risperidone.

Ed1937

https://www.alzconnected.org/discussion.aspx?g=posts&t=2147561691  

https://www.alzconnected.org/discussion.aspx?g=posts&t=2147543106  

Leaderoftheband

Thank you for the input

Jgirl57

My husband with dementia/Alz did not do well

on memantine.He was a a bit aggressive and thought he was

able to do things he couldn’t ( driving, money  

money management). Neurologist slowly backed him off

Leaderoftheband

@Jgirl57

I am finding out there are so many variations on how our loved ones respond to treatments. Thank you for you input

Pat6177

Leader, my DH was diagnosed in 2020, started on Aricept (generic Donepezil) and in 12-2021 he started on memantine at 5 mg per day increasing to 5 mg twice a day. Still not the full dose recommended but all he can take because he has kidney disease. He was in a decline last winter and I finally asked the dementia specialist if DH could go off the memantine in the late spring to see if that was making things worse. No real difference one way or the other when he went off the memantine but his decline didn’t continue as fast. So DH went back on the memantine at the beginning of Sept. In general, I have seen some improvements now that he is back on the memantine. His short term memory isn’t as short, occasionally he’ll remember something the next day, slight improvements in his thinking. These changes are small, nothing like what ImMaggieMae saw in her DH, but I was grateful for whatever. Then recently, he had a few days where nothing computed for him. This week it’s back to those small improvements. Two years ago, I didn’t think small improvements would matter to me but they do.

mommyandme (m&m)

I’ll chime in about my mom… when it was time to remove some meds due to “pill burden”, I started to titrate her off of Memantine.  I felt she began to have a harder time following directions, I put it back in and she regained her previous baseline. Tried again some months later with the same result.  In other words, I believe mom benefited from it which helped me in caregiving for her.  When she became bedbound and all ADLs gone, I took her off of it the third and last time. Not really anymore need for following important mobility directions. 

She was on it for prob about 5 years, until early stage 7. 

Good luck.