Have You Been Forgetting Things Lately? It Might Be Alzheimer’s Disease.
Memory and thinking skills may decline rapidly for people who have mild cognitive impairment, which is the stage before Alzheimer’s disease when people have mild memory problems but no dementia symptoms, and even more rapidly when dementia begins, which is when Alzheimer’s disease is usually diagnosed.
“These results show that we need to pay attention to this time before Alzheimer’s disease is diagnosed, when people are just starting to have problems forgetting things,” said study author Robert S. Wilson, PhD, of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.
The study involved 1,158 people living in Chicago with an average age of 79. A total of 149 of the participants had Alzheimer’s disease, 395 had mild cognitive impairment, and 614 had no thinking or memory problems.
The thinking skills of those with mild cognitive impairment declined twice as fast each year as those who had no cognitive problems, while the skills of those with Alzheimer’s disease declined four times as fast as those with no cognitive problems.
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