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Title: New Testing Model May Predict, Diagnose Future Dementia
URL: http://www.pslgroup.com/dg/22984A.htm
Doctor's Guide
August 20, 2008

CHICAGO -- August 20, 2008 -- A preliminary report published in the August 20 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that within-person variability on neuropsychological testing may be associated with development of dementia in older adults.

"Developing strategies to improve the prediction and diagnoses of dementia has paramount therapeutic and public health implications," the authors wrote.

"When neuropsychological tests are used for diagnostic purposes, an individual's level of performance on specific tests is measured against healthy normative samples to determine cognitive impairment. However, this approach does not take into account intra-individual variability in cognitive function."

Roee Holtzer, PhD, and colleagues from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Yeshiva University, New York, New York, evaluated 897 individuals, aged 70 years or older, who were part of The Einstein Aging Study -- a longitudinal study of aging and dementia in Bronx County, New York.

Participants had follow-up visits every 12 to 18 months, at which they underwent detailed neurological and neuropsychological evaluations. The researchers included tests for verbal IQ, attention/executive function, and memory. The study focused on whether within-person, across-neuropsychological test variability predicts future dementia.

Of the 897 participants, there were 61 cases of incident dementia (6.8%). On the basis of the consensus clinical diagnostic procedures, 47 participants developed incident dementia of the Alzheimer type and 18 participants developed incident vascular dementia. During the study, 128 individuals died, of which 18 had developed incident dementia.

"In summary, within-person, across-neuropsychological test variability was associated with development of dementia independently of performance of the neuropsychological tests. This finding needs to be replicated in different populations before it is applied in a clinical setting," the authors wrote.


SOURCE: American Medical Association

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