In a new study from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, researchers found that having a poor score on a simple memory test may be linked to biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease as well as very early signs of memory impairment that precede dementia by several years.
For the test, people are shown pictures of items and given cues about the item’s category, such as a picture of grapes with the cue of “fruit.”
Then participants are asked to remember the items, first on their own, then with the category cues for any items they did not remember.
This type of controlled learning helps with the mild memory retrieval problems that occur in many healthy elderly people but does not have much impact on memory for people with dementia.
In the study, the team examined 4,484 people with no cognitive problems and an average age of 71.
The participants were divided into five groups based on their scores on the test, or stages zero through four.
Stages zero through two reflect increasing difficulty with retrieving memories or items learned and precede dementia by five to eight years.
In these stages, people have increasing trouble remembering the items on their own, but they continue to be able to remember items when given cues.
In the third and fourth stages, people cannot remember all of the items even after they are given cues. These stages precede dementia by one to three years.
The study participants also had brain scans to look for the beta-amyloid plaques in the brain that are markers of Alzheimer’s disease, as well as to measure the volume of areas of the brain associated with Alzheimer’s pathology.
The team found that people who tested in the third and fourth stages were likely to have higher amounts of beta-amyloid in their brains than people in the lower stages.
They were also more likely to have a lower volume in the hippocampus and other areas of the brain associated with Alzheimer’s pathology.
At stage zero, 30% of people had beta-amyloid plaques, compared to 31% at stage one, 35% at stage two, 40% at stage three and 44% at stage four.
These findings suggest that this test can be used to improve our ability to detect cognitive decline in the stage before people are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
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The study is published in Neurology and was conducted by Ellen Grober et al.
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