Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Treatments and drugs
By Mayo Clinic staffTreatment can be challenging, and there's no cure for Lewy body dementia. Instead, doctors treat the individual symptoms.
Medications
- Cholinesterase inhibitors. These Alzheimer's disease medications work by increasing the levels of neurotransmitters — chemical messengers believed to be important for memory, thought and judgment — in the brain. This can help improve alertness and cognition, and may help reduce hallucinations and other behavioral problems.
- Parkinson's disease medications. These medications can help reduce Parkinson's-like muscular symptoms in some people with Lewy body dementia, but they can also cause increased confusion, hallucinations and delusions.
- Antipsychotic medications. These medications may somewhat improve delusions and hallucinations. However, at least a third of the people who have Lewy body dementia have a dangerous sensitivity to some of these types of drugs. Reactions, which are sometimes irreversible, can include severe Parkinson's-like symptoms and a worsening of confusion.
Therapies
Because antipsychotic drugs can worsen the symptoms of Lewy body dementia, it might be better to initially try nondrug approaches, such as:
- Modify the environment. Reducing clutter and distracting noise can make it easier for someone with dementia to focus and function.
- Modify the response. A caregiver's response to a behavior can make the behavior worse. It's best to avoid correcting and quizzing a person with dementia. Reassuring the person and validating his or her concerns can defuse most situations.
- Modify tasks. Break tasks into easier steps and focus on success, not failure. Structure and routine also help people with dementia feel safe.
