Believing that your memory is failing may actually be a predictor of a diagnosis of dementia or Alzheimer's disease, according to some fascinating German research in the April issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.Researchers from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Bonn say their work--involving 2,415 subjects--helps describe Alzheimer's as a three-stage clinical manifestation. First there is subjective memory impairment. Then mild cognitive impairment. And then dementia.
"The concept of mild cognitive impairment as a predementia manifestation of Alzheimer's disease is substantiated by studies providing biologic evidence for the presence of Alzheimer's disease in patients with mild cognitive impairment," writes lead author, Dr. Frank Jessen. "However, Alzheimer's disease-related pathologic changes in the brain evolve several years before the onset of mild cognitive impairment."
He says subjective memory impairment, or believing you have memory loss, may be a clinical manifestation of Alzheimer's disease. In his study, patients who started out with subjective memory impairment and who went on to have mild cognitive impairment 18 months later had almost 10 times the risk of any dementia at three years, and almost 20 times the risk of Alzheimer's disease--compared to patients without subjective memory impairment.
Read the MedPage Today story.
Read the Doctor's Guide article.
Read the abstract in the Archives of General Psychiatry.
No comments:
Post a Comment