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Tuesday, April 19, 2011

New Alzheimer Diagnostic Criteria Finalized

By John Gever, Senior Editor, MedPage Today
Published: April 19, 2011
Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco.

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Action Points  
  • Explain that final criteria for diagnosing Alzheimer's disease -- for clinical purposes and for recruiting trial participants -- have been issued by the National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer's Association.
  • Note that the diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease is based entirely on clinical exams and patient or caregiver reports, focusing on slowly progressing cognitive impairments and behavioral problems long associated with the disease.
Final criteria for diagnosing Alzheimer's disease -- for clinical purposes and for recruiting trial participants -- have been issued by the National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer's Association, tweaking draft versions released last summer.
Although the new guidelines are intended to update a previous set developed 27 years ago, they are little changed when it comes to diagnosing patients in routine practice.
But when used for research purposes -- most notably, for selecting patients to be included in clinical trials -- the revised criteria incorporate results from brain imaging and spinal taps to better ensure that patients really have Alzheimer's disease as opposed to vascular dementia, Parkinson's disease dementia, or other conditions with similar symptoms.
The new criteria came in three categories: dementia due to Alzheimer's disease; mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer's disease; and an entirely new entity called "preclinical stages of Alzheimer's disease."
They were published online in Alzheimer's & Dementia./.../

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