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Mh father in law is on Aricept. He has been for 2 years now. Not sure if it is still working. My MIL is incredibly smart, voracious reader and well just smart. She has my FIL on a "cocktail" of coconut oil and MCT's. Medium chain triglycerides. I went to college for Nutrition and I am a Pharmacy Tech. This is just a nutrition change not meds. After she started the coconut oil/ MCT's it seemed to improve the performance of the Aricept in my FIL.

My MIL got the info from a book written bydr Mary T. Newport " Alzheimer's Disease, what. If there were a cure"...so far so good. He acts more like himself. Just FYI. Hope it helps..
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My layman's view is that Aricept works until it stops working. Or maybe it works until there are no longer enough healthy brain cells for it to work with.

Aricept doesn't seem to work at all for some people. It is a godsend for others. A British study in 2004 concluded that the benefits were slight and the drug was not cost effective. They were looking at whether taking the drug delayed the need for NH care. They were not evaluating whether the patient had a better quality of life until that time.

While Aricept was developed for Alzheimer's, it is more effective in Lewy Body Dementia, perhaps because there is less brain cell destruction in that disease.

I say if a doctor suggests it, try it. If it seems to work, great! Keep it up.

Aricept was the first drug his dementia specialist prescribed for my husband. That was in the fall of 2003. He is still taking it.

We all want timelines! When it comes to drugs and dementia, it is a trial-and-adjust-and-trial-and-observe world. Reliable timelines are few and far between.
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