Background: Memantine is an N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist that is used to treat moderate to severe Alzheimer's Dementia (AD) and has been speculated to provide clinical benefits in Huntington's disease (HD).
Objective: To assess the effectiveness of memantine on the trajectory of cognitive decline in individuals with manifest HD.
Methods: Using participants from the Enroll-HD study, the primary analysis compared trajectories in cognition over a 5-year period using linear mixed effect models of prevalent and incident memantine users who were propensity-score-matched with non-users on measures of disease progression and demographics.
Results: In the primary analysis there were no significant differences in the trajectories between memantine users and non-users on any primary outcomes of interest.
Conclusions: Memantine use was not associated with any clinical benefit for individuals with manifest HD. Further studies are warranted to assess the impact of memantine on clinical outcomes in HD.
Keywords: Huntington's disease; cognition; memantine; progression.
© 2023 The Authors. Movement Disorders Clinical Practice published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.