Saudi Researcher Leads Canadian Team to Identify Treatment for Elderly Delirium Patients

In a recent study at London Health Sciences Centre, scientists have discovered a treatment for delirium, a state of confusion that hits more than one in five people over the age of 65.

“It can be life threatening. It almost doubles mortality”, said Dr Tareef Al-Aama, a Saudi researcher who led the team of Lawson Health Research Institute researchers.

“Delirium increases the length of stay in hospital and patients end up in nursing homes, because they got confused and it never went away", Al-Aama said.

"Its specific cause is unknown, but it can be precipitated by stress, by being in an unfamiliar environment, being ill or being on new medications", he added. 

“We think it has something to do with hormonal disturbances that occur when people are admitted to hospitals”, he further added.

Al-Aama and his colleagues found that delirium could be prevented with a low dose of melatonin, a hormone produced by the body that is responsible for a person’s biological clock.

In their study of 145 patients at Victoria Hospital, one group was given a placebo and the other the hormone at the dose a person’s body would normally produce.

In the group that received the placebo, 31% developed delirium. In the group that were given an oral dose of melatonin, 12% developed delirium.

“That is a significant reduction”, Al-Aama commented.

The researchers now hope to replicate the results in a larger study.

“It may be a breakthrough. It may become the standard of care. For now we think it is a very reasonable thing to do, to give older people in hospital a low dose of melatonin”, he said.

"Once delirium develops there is no treatment. You just have to wait it out. The bang for the buck is in trying to prevent it. It may be too late once it happens”, he added.

The study is published in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.