These "cholinesterase inhibitors" include tacrine (Cognex), donepezil (Aricept), rivastigmine (Exelon) and galantamine (Razadyne, formerly called Reminyl).
CNN: Better understanding of dementia leading to more effective therapies
Donepezil is one of a class of drugs known as cholinesterase inhibitors while memantine is a glutamate moderator.
Donepezil is approved in the U.S. for all stages of Alzheimer's while memantine is approved for moderate-to-severe Alzheimer's.
There are four licensed treatments for Alzheimer's - donepezil, galantamine, rivastigmine and memantine.
Taking either memantine or donepezil alone was better than nothing at all, but taking them together offered no additional benefit.
Prof Hopkins and colleagues used the drug donepezil, used to treat people with Alzheimer's disease, to test the automated system.
The High Court granted the two firms permission for a judicial review on donepezil, but the eventual ruling will also apply to the other two drugs.
People who continued taking donepezil did better on two different scales of cognition and impairment than those taking no medication or those taking memantine alone.
The researchers note that stopping donepezil can cause withdrawal (which can temporarily worsen symptoms), so the drug should be gradually tapered down before going off it completely.
Eisai and Pfizer, who produce donepezil, also known as Aricept, have also asked "fully transparent working version of the calculations used in the cost effectiveness model for independent evaluation and comment".
Donepezil was also more effective than another common Alzheimer's drug, memantine (Namenda), in patients with later-stage disease, although memantine still showed some benefit, according to the study published this week in The New England Journal of Medicine.
All of the patients included in this study were still living in communities (as opposed to nursing homes) in England and Scotland and all had been taking donepezil for about two to three years by the time they enrolled in the trial.
Although the combination of donepezil and memantine -- a common strategy in the U.S., but not the U.K. -- had no added benefit, each drug had "independent positive effects, " says Howard, who advises patients at this stage of the disease to continue taking both drugs if possible.
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