Background many medications possess anticholinergic activity. Their use is associated with a number of serious adverse effects including cognitive effects. The cumulative anticholinergic effect of medications as assessed by tools such as the anticholinergic burden scale (AchB) can identify people particularly at risk of anticholinergic side-effects. Currently, >20 tools are available for clinicians to use, but there is no consensus on the most appropriate tool. Methods a newly created online tool—International Anticholinergic Cognitive Burden Tool (IACT)—based on natural language processing and chemical structure analysis, was developed and made available for clinicians to test its functions. We carried out a survey (between 8th of February and 31st of March 2021) to assess the overall need for an assessment tool as well as the usability of the IACT. Results a total of 110 responses were received from different countries and practitioners’ groups. The majority of the participants (86.11%) stated they would use a tool for AchB assessment if available and when they were asked to rate the IACT against other tools, amongst 34 responders, 20.59% rated it better and 8.82% rated it significantly better, 44.12% rated it neither better, nor worse, 14.71% rated it worse and 11.76% somewhat worse. Conclusion there is a need for an anticholinergic burden calculator to assess the anticholinergicity of medications. Tools such as the IACT potentially could meet this demand due to its ability to assign scores to current and new medications appearing on the market based both on their chemical structure and reported adverse pharmacological effects.

中文翻译：

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一种基于人工智能的新型工具来评估抗胆碱能负担：一项调查

背景 许多药物具有抗胆碱能活性。它们的使用与许多严重的副作用有关，包括认知影响。通过抗胆碱能负荷量表 (AchB) 等工具评估的药物的累积抗胆碱能作用可以识别出特别有抗胆碱能副作用风险的人。目前，有超过 20 种工具可供临床医生使用，但尚未就最合适的工具达成共识。方法基于自然语言处理和化学结构分析，开发了一种新创建的在线工具——国际抗胆碱能认知负担工具 (IACT)，并可供临床医生测试其功能。我们进行了一项调查（2021 年 2 月 8 日至 3 月 31 日），以评估对评估工具的总体需求以及 IACT 的可用性。结果 共收到来自不同国家和从业者团体的 110 份回复。大多数参与者 (86.11%) 表示，如果可用的话，他们会使用 AchB 评估工具，当他们被要求针对其他工具对 IACT 进行评分时，在 34 名响应者中，20.59% 的评价更好，8.82% 的评价明显更好， 44.12% 的人认为它既不好也不坏，14.71% 的人认为它更差，11.76% 的人认为它更差。结论 需要一种抗胆碱能负担计算器来评估药物的抗胆碱能作用。