Effect of acetazolamide on neurocognition
hypoxemia, cerebral hypoxemia, COPD
COPD
In this study, it could be shown that acetazolamide leads to a significant improvement of DE at altitude compared to baseline during post-sleep recall, but not during immediate recall and 60° adaptation. As DE in participants taking acetazolamide remained stable between immediate and post-sleep recall, whilst the DE of participants taking placebo increased the findings are consistent with amelioration of memory consolidation at altitude by acetazolamide, especially during sleep.Consistently, acetazolamide increased the chance of performing a valid movement at altitude compared to placebo, the effect being strongest for post-sleep recall and it reduced reaction time at altitude compared to placebo during post-sleep recall and 60° adaptation.In patients with COPD participating in a similar study with the same test and same dosage of acetazolamide, we found not only a significant positive effect of acetazolamide on post-sleep but also on immediate recall, which was not the case in our data. Possibly, the effect of acetazolamide during immediate recall was more evident in patients with COPD than in healthy participants due to the more pronounced cerebral hypoxemia in the placebo group of COPD patients at altitude in combination with a reduced response of cerebral blood flow to hypoxemia [In studies evaluating performance in the paced auditorial serial addition test (PASAT) and auditorial memory testing, White et al. [Tesler et al. [