Neuropsychiatric Symptoms Predict Which Patients With MCI Will Develop Alzheimer’s Disease

Is your doctor well versed in these because of your extra risk of dementia post stroke? NO? Then you don't have a functioning stroke doctor!

Your risk of dementia, has your doctor told you of this?  Your doctor is responsible for preventing this!

1. A documented 33% dementia chance post-stroke from an Australian study?   May 2012.

2. Then this study came out and seems to have a range from 17-66%. December 2013.`    

3. A 20% chance in this research.   July 2013.

4. Dementia Risk Doubled in Patients Following Stroke September 2018

Neuropsychiatric symptoms are a common accompaniment of dementia. These include agitation, depression, apathy, delusions, hallucinations, and sleep impairment.

The latest here:

Neuropsychiatric Symptoms Predict Which Patients With MCI Will Develop Alzheimer’s Disease

Neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) may inform dementia risk assessment in conjunction with cognitive testing and imaging and laboratory Alzheimer’s disease (AD) biomarkers, and was independently associated with the risk of mild cognitive impairment (MCI)-dementia progression, over and beyond the contributions of CSF biomarkers, according to a study published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.

“It's hard to predict which patients will have a more rapid progression and receive a diagnosis of dementia,” said Maria Vittoria Spampinato, MD, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina. “It’s important to know who is likely to progress to dementia, as they will need a lot of support and assistance from their family and other caregivers.”

“Although it’s important to do lab testing to measure the number of amyloid plaques and tau disease, NPS testing is important in identifying which patients are at greater risk,” she said.

To test whether NPS could help to predict MCI to AD progression, the researchers identified 300 patients aged 65 years and older with MCI from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative database. Patients were given the Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) to document symptoms, such as anxiety, depression, delusions, hallucinations, abnormal movement behaviour, and sleep disorders as potential early signs of preclinical AD to establish a prediction model for AD.

The study findings showed that more than a quarter of the patients with MCI went on to develop AD. For each 1-point increase in NPI score, there was a 3% increase in the risk of mental decline leading to the diagnosis of AD.

Surprisingly, the study showed that NPS predicted the risk of mental decline better than certain established risk factors of AD.

The prediction model developed by Dr. Spampinato and colleagues shows promise for identifying which patients with MCI will progress to AD; however, it will need to be validated in a larger group of patients recruited from memory care institutions before being used in the clinic.

Reference: https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad220835

SOURCE: Medical University of South Carolina