Memory Loss from Dementia

Questions Help Tell Memory Loss from Dementia

By Nancy Walsh, Staff Writer, MedPage Today

Published: February 02, 2012

Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco.

Action Points

• Researchers found that a simple questionnaire can help differentiate individuals experiencing normal age-related memory loss from those likely to be developing dementia.
• Note that those who often repeated questions, statements, and stories on the same day also were at very high risk for the development of amnestic mild cognitive impairment.

A simple questionnaire can help differentiate individuals experiencing normal age-related memory loss from those at risk for developing dementia, most notably by their orientation to time and patterns of repetitive speech, researchers found.

On the 21-item Alzheimer's Questionnaire, patients having trouble remembering the day, month, year, and time of day were almost 18 times more likely to have amnestic mild cognitive impairment, a precursor to dementia (OR 17.97, 95% CI 2.63 to 122.77, P=0.003), according to Michael Malek-Ahmadi, MSPH, and colleagues from the Banner Sun Health Research Institute in Sun City, Ariz.

Those who often repeated questions, statements, and stories on the same day also were at very high risk (OR 13.12, 95% CI 3.02 to 57.66, P=0.001), the researchers reported online in BMC Geriatrics./.../