Alzheimer's disease first symptoms are age dependent: Evidence from the NACC dataset.

Alzheimers Dement

Department of Neurology, Alzheimer Center, Neuroscience Campus Amsterdam, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, Neuroscience Campus Amsterdam, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Published: November 2015

Introduction: Determining the relationship between age and Alzheimer's disease (AD) presentation is important to improve understanding and provide better patient services.

Methods: We used AD patient data (N = 7815) from the National Alzheimer Coordinating Center database and multinomial logistic regression to investigate presentation age and first cognitive/behavioral symptoms.

Results: The odds of having a nonmemory first cognitive symptom (including impairment in judgment and problem solving, language, and visuospatial function) increased with younger age (P < .001, all tests). Compared with apathy/withdrawal, the odds of having depression and "other" behavioral symptoms increased with younger age (P < .02, both tests), whereas the odds of having psychosis and no behavioral symptom increased with older age (P < .001, both tests).

Discussion: There is considerable heterogeneity in the first cognitive/behavioral symptoms experienced by AD patients. Proportions of these symptoms change with age with patients experiencing increasing nonmemory cognitive symptoms and more behavioral symptoms at younger ages.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4619185PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jalz.2014.12.007DOI Listing

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