What is it about?
Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) is a proposed intermediate state between normal cognition and dementia. However not all people with MCI progress to dementia, some remain stable and others improve. We were interested to investigate what could help a clinician seeing a patient in a memory clinic predict who was more likely to decline further.
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Why is it important?
A diagnosis of MCI may alarm patients concerned that they will develop Alzheimer's disease or another dementia. In this study from nine memory clinics 28% of patients progressed over three years, which is slightly lower than the 30-36% reported previously. The risk of further cognitive decline was greater in people who are older, have lower cognitive scores when first seen and have a steeper downward trajectory over the first six months.
Perspectives
More accurate diagnosis of incipient Alzheimer's disease or another dementia may assist patients and their families to prepare for the future. It also may be a motivation to enrol in a drug trial. Other features not examined in this study can help predict who is more likely to progress, namely decline in memory and other cognitive domains and presence of Alzheimer's biomarkers such as can be detected by amyloid PET imaging, analysis of cerebro-spinal fluid and apolipoprotein E genotyping.
Professor Henry Brodaty
University of New South Wales
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Progression from mild cognitive impairment to dementia: A 3-year longitudinal study, Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, May 2014, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0004867414536237.
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