Older news items (pre-2010) brought over from the old website
Effective new cognitive screening test for detection of Alzheimer's
A new cognitive test for detecting Alzheimer's has been developed, and designed to be suitable for non-specialist use. The TYM ("test your memory") involves 10 tasks including ability to copy a sentence, semantic knowledge, calculation, verbal fluency and recall ability. It has been tested on 540 healthy individuals and 139 patients with diagnosed Alzheimer's or mild cognitive impairment. Healthy controls completed the test in an average time of five minutes and gained an average score of 47 out of 50, compared to 45 for those with mild cognitive impairment, 39 for those with non-Alzheimer dementias and 33 for those with Alzheimer’s. Among controls, the average score was not affected by age until after 70, when it showed a small decline. There were no gender or geographical background differences in performance. The TYM detected 93% of patients with Alzheimer's, compared to only 52% by the widely used mini-mental state examination.
Brown, J. et al. 2009. Self administered cognitive screening test (TYM) for detection of Alzheimer’s disease: cross sectional study. BMJ, 338:b2030, doi: 10.1136/bmj.b2030
Full text available here.
Early identification of dementia increasingly difficult
A study comparing nondemented 70-year-olds examined in the early 1970s with nondemented 70-year-olds examined in the year 2000 has revealed that those who were examined in 2000 scored much higher on non-memory cognitive tests than those examined 30 years earlier — indicating that such tests can no longer be used to predict future dementia. Moreover, although memory loss was a predictor for later development of dementia, it wasn’t conclusive —not everybody with poor memory developed dementia. This was particularly true of the very old (85 year olds).
Sacuiu, S.F. 2009. Prodromal Cognitive Signs of Dementia. Doctoral thesis from Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg. http://gupea.ub.gu.se/dspace/handle/2077/19395
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-05/uog-eio_1052009.php
Degree of test variability improves dementia diagnosis
A study of nearly 900 older adults has found that the degree of variability in performance across neuropsychological tests, measured within a person, improved the prediction of dementia above and beyond one's level of performance on each test alone.
Holtzer, R. et al. 2008. Within-Person Across-Neuropsychological Test Variability and Incident Dementia. JAMA, 300(7), 823-830.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-08/aeco-set081908.php
New criterion may improve identification of dementia risk in highly educated older adults
A shift in the cutoff point on the widely used cognitive screening tool, the mini-mental state examination (MMSE), is suggested for highly educated older adults, in order to more effectively assess the risk of dementia.
Bryant, S.E. et al. 2008. Detecting Dementia With the Mini-Mental State Examination in Highly Educated Individuals. Archives of Neurology, 65 (7), 963-967.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-07/jaaj-ncm071008.php
New 'everyday cognition' scale tracks how older adults function in daily life
A new, carefully validated questionnaire called Everyday Cognition (ECog) has been developed by seven psychologists. The 39-question screening tool is designed to enable mild functional problems in older adults to be quickly and easily identified. The questionnaire needs to be filled out by someone who knows an older adult well, such as a spouse, adult child, or close friend. It looks at everyday function in seven key cognitive domains: memory, language, semantic (factual) knowledge, visuospatial abilities, planning, organization and divided attention. The test has been shown to be sensitive to early changes present in Mild Cognitive Impairment, and unlike other cognitive tests, does not appear to be strongly influenced by education level. The test even differentiated between people diagnosed with mild impairment in memory only and those mildly impaired in several areas.
Farias, S.T. et al. 2008. The Measurement of Everyday Cognition (ECog): Scale Development and Psychometric Properties. Neuropsychology, 22 ( 4), 531-544.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-07/apa-nc062408.php
Simple test predicts 6-year risk of dementia
A 14-point index combining medical history, cognitive testing, and physical examination — a simple test that can be given by any physician — has been found to predict a person’s risk for developing dementia within six years with 87% accuracy. As measured by the index, the risk factors for developing dementia are an age of 70 or older, poor scores on two simple cognitive tests, slow physical functioning on everyday tasks such as buttoning a shirt or walking 15 feet, a history of coronary artery bypass surgery, a body mass index of less than 18, and current non-consumption of alcohol. The results do need to be validated in other populations — for example, they have not yet been tested on Hispanics or Asian-Americans.
The tests were described in a presentation at the 2007 International Conference on Prevention of Dementia, in Washington, DC.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-06/uoc--stp060707.php
Personality changes may help detect Lewy bodies dementia
Dementia with Lewy bodies is the second most common neurodegenerative cause of dementia. It shares characteristics with both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, but some medications used to treat Alzheimer's patients are potentially dangerous for people with dementia with Lewy bodies. Early diagnosis is therefore important. A new study has found that people with dementia with Lewy bodies often display passive personality changes some time before cognitive deficits are evident, offering hope that a simple personality test might help diagnosis.
Galvin, J.E., Malcom, H., Johnson, D. & Morris, J.C. 2007. Personality traits distinguishing dementia with Lewy bodies from Alzheimer disease. Neurology, 68, 1895-1901.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-05/aaon-pcm052107.php
New dementia screening tool detects early cognitive problems
A new screening tool for dementia — the Saint Louis University Mental Status Examination (SLUMS) — appears to work better in identifying mild cognitive problems in the elderly than the commonly used Mini Mental Status Examination — particularly for the more educated patients. It takes a clinician about seven minutes to administer the SLUMS, which supplements the Mini Mental Status Examination by asking patients to perform tasks such as doing simple math computations, naming animals, recalling facts and drawing the hands on a clock. The SLUMS is available at this link http://medschool.slu.edu/agingsuccessfully/pdfsurveys/slumsexam_05.pdf
Tariq, S.H. et al. 2006. Comparison of the Saint Louis University Mental Status Examination and the Mini-Mental State Examination for Detecting Dementia and Mild Neurocognitive Disorder—A Pilot Study. American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 14, 900-910.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-11/slu-nds103006.php
More sensitive tests for predicting Alzheimer's
The first study used data from 119 participants in the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam. The memory test scores of those who two years later developed Alzheimer's were compared with the scores of those who stayed healthy. Three tests were very good at predicting who would later develop Alzheimer's: a Paired-Associate Learning Test, which cued participants to recall five semantically related and five semantically unrelated pairs of words; a Perceptual Identification Task, which measured how fast participants read aloud words briefly presented on a computer screen; a Visual Association Test, which cued participants to recall six line drawings of common objects that had been presented earlier in an illogical interaction with another object or cue. On the word-pair memory test, people destined to develop Alzheimer's disease didn't do any better when words were related than when they weren't, suggesting they’d already lost deep semantic knowledge. On the word-reading test, word repetition didn't help high-risk participants to perform better, a sign that implicit learning was impaired. The popular Mini Mental Status Exam (MMSE), a test mainly sensitive to episodic memory, was not as good a predictor.
In the second study, a dichotic listening task, which measures how well people process information when they hear one thing in the left ear and another in the right ear, was found to also be predictive of Alzheimer’s, confirming that people have problems with selective attention very early in the disease.
Spaan, P.E.J., Raaijmakers, J.G.W. & Jonker, C. 2005. Early Assessment of Dementia: The Contribution of Different Memory Components. Neuropsychology, 19 (5).
Duchek, J.M. & Balota, D.A. 2005. Failure to Control Prepotent Pathways in Early Stage Dementia of the Alzheimer's Type: Evidence from Dichotic Listening. Neuropsychology, 19 (5).
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-09/apa-pfm092105.php
Early warning signs of Alzheimer's show up years before official diagnosis
A meta-analysis of 47 studies of Alzheimer's disease has revealed that people can show early warning signs across several cognitive domains years before they are officially diagnosed, confirming that Alzheimer's causes general deterioration and tends to follow a stable preclinical stage with a sharp drop in function. People at the preclinical stage showed marked preclinical deficits in global cognitive ability, episodic memory, perceptual speed, and executive functioning; along with somewhat smaller deficits in verbal ability, visuospatial skill, and attention. There was no preclinical impairment in primary memory. There is no clear qualitative difference between the normal 75-year old and a preclinical Alzheimer’s sufferer; instead it seems that the normal elderly person, the preclinical Alzheimer’s person, and the early clinical Alzheimer’s patient represent three instances on a continuum of cognitive capabilities.
Bäckman, L., Jones, S., Berger, A-K. & Laukka, E.J. 2005. Cognitive impairment in preclinical Alzheimer's disease: A meta-analysis. Neuropsychology, 19 (4).
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-07/apa-ews072505.php
More sensitive test norms better predict who might develop Alzheimer's disease
Early diagnosis of Alzheimer's is becoming more important with new medical and psychological interventions that can slow (but not stop) the course of the disease. Given this, it is suggested that more sensitive testing may be necessary for highly intelligent people, who, on average, show clinical signs of Alzheimer's later than the general population. Once they show such signs, they decline much faster. A study of 42 older people with IQ's of 120 or more, used two different test norms to forecast problems: the standard norm, derived from a large cross-section of the population, or an adjusted high-IQ norm that measured changes against the individual's higher ability level. The raised cutoffs predicted that 11 of the 42 individuals were at risk for future decline – compared with standard cutoffs, which indicated they were normal. True to the former prediction, three and a half years later, nine of those 11 people had declined. Six of those went on to develop mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a transitional illness from normal aging to a dementia (of which one type is Alzheimer's). Five of these individuals have since received a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease, two years after this study was submitted. It is also suggested that, at the other end of the scale, those with below-average intelligence have the potential for being misdiagnosed as 'demented' when they are not, and the norms should be adjusted downwards accordingly.
Rentz, D.M., Huh, T.J., Faust, R.R., Budson, A.E., Scinto, L.F.M., Sperling, R.A. & Daffner, K.R. 2004. Use of IQ-Adjusted Norms to Predict Progressive Cognitive Decline in Highly Intelligent Older Individuals. Neuropsychology, 18 (1).
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-01/apa-mst122903.php
New method of distinguishing Alzheimer's from Lewy body dementia
Looking at specific changes in alertness and cognition may provide a reliable method for distinguishing Alzheimer's from dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) and normal aging. Four characteristics significantly distinguished patients with DLB from persons with Alzheimer’s and normal elderly controls: daytime drowsiness and lethargy despite getting enough sleep the night before; falling asleep two or more hours during the day; staring into space for long periods and episodes of disorganized speech. "For the normal elderly control group, one or two of these behaviors was found in only 11 percent of the group. For the patients with AD, one or two of these behaviors were not uncommon, but over 63% of the patients with DLB had three or four of these behaviors.” DLB accounts for as much as 20 to 35% of the dementia seen in the United States.
Ferman, T.J., Smith, G.E., Boeve, B.F., Ivnik, R.J., Petersen, R.C., Knopman, D., Graff-Radford, N., Parisi, J. & Dickson, D.W. 2004. DLB fluctuations: Specific features that reliably differentiate DLB from AD and normal aging. Neurology, 62,181-187.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-01/ama-nmo010804.php
Brief telephone questionnaire screens for early signs of dementia
Researchers have developed a brief telephonic questionnaire that helps distinguish between persons with early signs of dementia and persons with normal cognitive function. The questionnaire provides a way to reach out to persons with dementia whose impairment otherwise may go undetected until substantial cognitive deterioration has occurred. The questionnaire consists of a test of delayed recall and 2 questions that ask whether the person needs help with remembering to take medications or with planning a trip for errands. It is estimated that of 100 people who score positive on this test, 42 will actually have cognitive impairment. In other words, this does not provide a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, but provides evidence that further evaluation is required. The rate of false positives compares favorably to other types of screening tests. A further study is underway to confirm the validity and reliability of the test.
Fillit, H. et al. 2003. A Brief Telephonic Instrument to Screen for Cognitive Impairment in a Managed Care Population. Journal of Clinical Outcomes Management, , 419-429.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-09/twc-btq091603.php
Verbal memory tests predict dementia
The Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam tested the memories of a large group of elderly people on two occasions, two years apart. Performance on the memory tests was then compared between those who developed dementia during those two years and those who did not. It was found that those who later were found to have dementia were scarcely better at remembering word pairs clearly linked in meaning (for example, pipe - cigar) than word pairs without such a link (for example nail - butter), on the first test. (those who not have dementia two years later did, as is usual, benefit from such a link in meaning). In addition, those in the early stage of dementia did not benefit from the repeated presentation of words. The results suggest a means by which elderly people in the early stages of dementia can be identified, which is important because the drugs used to inhibit dementia only work in the earliest stages of the disease.
This was revealed in doctoral research by the neuropsychologist Pauline Spaan from the University of Amsterdam.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-01/nofs-mtp012403.php
Verbal memory test best indicator of who will have Alzheimer's disease
A meta-analysis of 31 studies involving a total of 1,144 Alzheimer's patients and 6,046 healthy controls, supports the use of the California Verbal Learning Test in predicting future Alzheimer’s type dementia. Long delay recall and percent recall were the best predictors, with executive function type measures also being predictive but less so than both the long and short delay memory tests. Changes in the hippocampus were the best volumetric or neuroimaging measure but in general volumetric measures were less sensitive to preclinical stages of the dementia than were the neuropsychological tests. It should be noted that a decline in various types of memory, especially verbal episodic memory, is also observable in normal elderly; the crucial factor in determining a pre-dementia state lies in the size of the memory deficit.
Zakzanis, K.K. & Boulos, M.I. 2002. A Meta-Analysis of ApoE Genotype and Neuropsychologic and Neuroanatomic Changes in Preclinical Alzheimer's Disease. Presentation at the 110th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association (APA) on August 25.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-08/apa-vmt081302.php
Early diagnosis of Alzheimer's
An analysis of data from 40 participants enrolled in a long-term study at the UCSD Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC) found that "paper-and-pencil" cognitive skills tests administered to normal subjects averaging 75 years of age contained early signs of cognitive decline in those subjects who later developed Alzheimer’s disease. All participants were symptom-free when they took the test. The differences were quite subtle - only some performance measures were affected.
Jacobson MW, Delis DC, Bondi MW, Salmon DP. Do neuropsychological tests detect preclinical Alzheimer's disease: Individual-test versus cognitive-discrepancy score analyses. Neuropsychology. 2002;16(2):132–139.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-04/uoc--trs040502.php