Washington, Oct. 26: Giving elderly patients certain general anesthetics can increase their risk of developing Alzheimer's disease and other cognitive problems, reveals a study by US researchers.

Pravat Mandal of University of Pittsburgh Medical School, Pennsylvania, says that the link between surgery and cognitive problems was first noted during the 1950s, but it was never clear whether that was the result of the surgery itself or the anesthetics.

But now, he says, animal studies and test tube experiments have shown that certain anesthetics reduce the rate at which brain cells are born and develop.

Presenting the new findings last week at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Atlanta, Mandal said that exposure to anesthetics like halothane for just six hours was sufficient to cause clumping of beta amyloid protein similar to that seen in patients with Alzheimer's.

He also said that exposure to halothane to older people may prove dangerous for them, because they have more beta amyloid in their brains.

"It is a seriously deadly combination when an older person receives halothane," says Mandal

The researchers also studied other anesthetics used in the US and Europe, and found that they also affected the protein, though they seemed to take longer to exert their potentially deadly effects.

However, the researchers said that the intravenous anesthetic thiopental did not show any effect on the proteins.

The researchers believe that the new findings are important, as it may help doctors in determining which anesthetics to use for patients, besides providing the standardized follow-up methods for recording cognitive decline.

"The main focus should now be using an anesthetic that does not have any undesirable and deadly effects," Mandal said. (ANI)