Alzheimer’s: Study Says Alzheimer’s May be Easily Misdiagnosed

Alzheimer’s: Study Says Alzheimer’s May be Easily Misdiagnosed
A nurse holds the hands of a person suffering from Alzheimer's disease on September 21, 2009 at Les Fontaines retirement home in eastern France. (Sebastien Bozon/AFP/Getty Images)
2/25/2011
Updated:
10/1/2015
<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/90998188.jpg" alt="A nurse holds the hands of a person suffering from Alzheimer's disease on September 21, 2009 at Les Fontaines retirement home in eastern France. (Sebastien Bozon/AFP/Getty Images)" title="A nurse holds the hands of a person suffering from Alzheimer's disease on September 21, 2009 at Les Fontaines retirement home in eastern France. (Sebastien Bozon/AFP/Getty Images)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1805275"/></a>
A nurse holds the hands of a person suffering from Alzheimer's disease on September 21, 2009 at Les Fontaines retirement home in eastern France. (Sebastien Bozon/AFP/Getty Images)
Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias associated with aging could easily be misdiagnosed, based on new research to be presented in mid-April at the 2011 annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology in Honolulu.

According to the Alzheimer’s Association, dementia is characterized by the loss of or decline in memory and other cognitive abilities. It is caused by various diseases and conditions that lead to damaged brain cells, including Alzheimer’s disease.

Alzheimer’s usually develops after age 65 and is the most common cause of dementia in the United States, currently affecting an estimated 5.3 million Americans. Other dementias include Parkinson’s disease, characterized by Lewy bodies (abnormal protein deposits), and vascular dementia.

The study was carried out in Hawaii, led by Dr. Lon White at the Kuakini Medical System. The researchers autopsied the brains of 426 Japanese-American men with an average age of 87 at death, including 211 men with a dementia diagnosis attributed to Alzheimer’s disease.

Around half of the men with dementia had amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles in their brains typical of Alzheimer’s disease.

However, the team found that the remaining men with dementia did not have sufficient brain lesions to qualify an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. Instead, there was at least one type of other lesion that could cause different dementias, including microinfarcts, Lewy bodies, and hippocampal sclerosis or generalized brain atrophy.

“Diagnosing specific dementias in people who are very old is complex, but with the large increase in dementia cases expected within the next 10 years in the United States, it will be increasingly important to correctly recognize, diagnose, prevent, and treat age-related cognitive decline,” said White in a press release.

“Larger studies are needed to confirm these findings and provide insight as to how we may more accurately diagnose and prevent Alzheimer’s disease and other principal dementing disease processes in the elderly,” White said.

The results of this study are still preliminary and must undergo peer review before being published in a medical journal.
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