New Tool Can Help Predict Risk of Alzheimer’s in Elderly
08/06/2009A new tool can help predict whether people age 65 and older have a high risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Research on the tool is published in the May 13, 2009, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
“This new risk index could be very important both for research and for people at risk of developing dementia,” said study author Deborah E. Barnes, PhD, of the University of California, San Francisco. “It could be used to identify people at high risk for dementia for studies on new drugs or prevention methods. The tool could also identify people who have no signs of dementia but should be monitored closely.”
The risk index is a 15-point scale. People who score eight or more points on the scale are at high risk of developing dementia in the next six years. Several of the items on the scale are well-known risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease, such as older age, low scores on tests of thinking skills, and having a gene that has been linked to the disease.
Other factors predicting dementia risk were more surprising: People who are underweight, do not drink alcohol, have had coronary bypass surgery, or are slow at performing physical tasks such as buttoning a shirt are more likely to develop dementia than people who do not have these risk factors.
To develop the index, researchers examined 3,375 people with an average age of 76 and no evidence of dementia and followed them for six years. During that time, 480 of the people, or 14 percent, developed dementia. The researchers then determined which factors best predicted who would develop dementia and created the point index.
A total of 56 percent of those with high scores on the index developed dementia, compared to 23 percent of those with moderate scores and four percent of those with low scores. Overall, the index correctly classified 88 percent of the participants.
