Lithium deficiency in MCI and Alzheimer's

[thelastpsych]

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A recent article on Nature explored the relationship between Lithium deficiency in some cortical regions, and mild cognitive impairment/ alzheimer's: "Reducing endogenous cortical Li by approximately 50% markedly increased the deposition of amyloid-β and the accumulation of phospho-tau, and led to pro-inflammatory microglial activation, the loss of synapses, axons and myelin, and accelerated cognitive decline"

I was wondering if you guys tend to use lithium more on bipolar patients with MCI/AD or as first line as an augmentation strategy for unipolar depression in these patients, since the antipsychotics tend to worsen cognition overall (except maybe lurasidone?).


Reference: Lithium deficiency and the onset of Alzheimer's disease - PubMed

 

[comp1]

Omph, that is not a pill you want to want to mess around with "Did I take my dose already?"

 

[Stagg737]

Omph, that is not a pill you want to want to mess around with "Did I take my dose already?"

True, but if small doses of lithium orotate like the 5-10mg doses early on can help prevent or slow Alzheimer’s that would be huge. Orotate is 4.5x less actual lithium per mg than the lithium carbonate we prescribe and has lower bioavailability. So someone would have to legitimately try and overdose on an entire bottle of most OTC lithium supplements to likely be dangerous, and even then they’d probably just be on a therapeutic dose for bipolar patients.