Double Alzheimer's screening
A new study has shown that almost all patients with mild memory impairment who showed good results of short screening tests for olfaction and cognitive abilities had a very low risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.
The researchers decided to evaluate the feasibility of performing a double test, including an assessment of cognitive functions and determining the ability to recognize odors, to predict the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. The aim of the study is to reduce the number of unnecessary complex expensive diagnostic tests (positron emission tomography, lumbar puncture and others) for people who, according to the screening results, have a low risk of developing dementia.
The researchers analyzed data from 749 elderly people with moderate cognitive impairment without dementia living in the city who underwent a brief cognitive screening and a sense of smell test. The participants were then monitored for an average of four years to see if any of them were later diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease or other types of dementia.
During the follow-up period, 109 participants developed dementia, the vast majority of them were diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.
The researchers found that almost all (96.5%) of the participants who performed well in both tests did not develop dementia during the study period. Among the participants who showed good results on these tests, no one aged 70-75 or 81-83 years was in a state of transition to dementia during the follow-up period.
These results suggest that for older people over the age of 70 who do well on the olfactory test and cognitive test, the development of dementia in the next few years is unlikely, and further diagnostic tests for dementia are not required.
To confirm and evaluate the practical applicability of both tests, it is necessary to conduct a longer study in a larger sample.
Article by D. Devnand et al. Intact global cognitive and olfactory abilities predict lack of transition to dementia is published in the journal Alzheimer and dementia.
Aminat Adzhieva, portal "Eternal Youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru based on EurekAlert: Cognitive screen paired with odoridentification predicts lack of transition to dementia.