Adults older than 50 years of age with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), taking methotrexate (for more than 4 years) was linked with a lower risk of a following dementia diagnosis, as elucidated from this case-control study across multiple electronic health records (EHR) databases. No such association was found when sulfasalazine was used.

As explained earlier, the inflammatory processes have been shown to play a role in dementia. To understand this role, the study investigators of this particular study choose 2 anti-inflammatory drugs i.e. methotrexate and sulfasalazine to examination their association with dementia risk.

This is a multi-national multi-database case-control study with patients over 50 years old with RA (486 dementia cases; 641 controls), recognized from EHR in the Spain, UK, Denmark and the Netherlands. Conditional logistic regression models were used to study dementia risk.

Previous methotrexate use was related with a lower risk of dementia (OR 0.71, 95% CI 0.52–0.98). Also, methotrexate therapy for >4 years portrayed a lowest risk of dementia (odds ratio 0.37, 95% CI 0.17–0.79). The use of Sulfasalazine was not related with dementia.

To understand the risk of dementia, there is a need of future studies to elucidate the relationship between earlier methotrexate use and duration in addition to biological treatments.