WASHINGTON — There are no good drugs to treat dementia and doctors just need to try them in a hit-or-miss fashion to try to help patients, according to new guidelines released on Monday. Experts who tried to set up treatment guidelines were disappointed to find no good options for patients with dementia, and no way to determine which drug might be best for certain cases. ‘There is no cure for dementia and many of the drugs … are being prescribed without evidence,’ Dr. Amir Qaseem of the American College of Physicians, who led the study, said in a telephone interview. ‘The benefits of therapy may be very modest.’ Qaseem and colleagues at the American Academy of Family Physicians reviewed the results of 96 different studies of five different drugs approved for treating dementia. Four are in a class of drugs called cholinesterase inhibitors — Pfizer and Eisai Co Inc’s Aricept; galantamine, sold generically and under the brand names Razadyne, Reminyl and Nivalin; rivastigmine, sold by Novartis AG under the brand name Exelone; and tacrine, marketed to combat Alzheimer’s disease under the brand name Cognex. The fifth drug, memantine, is known as a neuropeptide -modifying […]