Premium
Alzheimer's disease first symptoms are age dependent: Evidence from the NACC dataset
Author(s) -
Barnes Josephine,
Dickerson Bradford C.,
Frost Chris,
Jiskoot Lize C.,
Wolk David,
Flier Wiesje M.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
alzheimer's and dementia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.713
H-Index - 118
eISSN - 1552-5279
pISSN - 1552-5260
DOI - 10.1016/j.jalz.2014.12.007
Subject(s) - apathy , odds , depression (economics) , cognition , disease , psychosis , odds ratio , logistic regression , medicine , psychiatry , psychology , clinical psychology , economics , macroeconomics
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.