Scientists Predict Time It Takes from Alzheimer’s Diagnosis to Nursing Home and Death

A Columbia University Medical Center-led research team has clinically validated a new method for predicting time to full-time care, nursing home residence, or death for patients with Alzheimer’s disease. +Alzheimer's Reading Room The method, which uses data gathered from a single patient visit, is based on a complex model of Alzheimer’s disease progression that the researchers developed by consecutively following two sets of Alzheimer’s patients for 10 years each. The results were published online ahead of print in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. Subscribe to the Alzheimer's Reading Room Email: “Predicting Alzheimer’s progression has been a challenge because the disease varies significantly from one person to another—two Alzheimer’s patients may both appear to have mild forms of the disease, yet one may progress rapidly, while the other progresses much more slowly,” said senior author Yaakov Stern, PhD, professor of neuropsychology (in neurology, psychiatry, and psychology and in the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain and the Gertrude H. Sergievsky Center) at CUMC. “Our method enables clinicians to predict the disease path with great specificity.” Quick Facts: Alzheimer’s Disease in America“Until now, some methods of predicting the course of Alzheimer’s have required data not obtained in routine clinical practice, such as specific neuropsychological or other measurements, and have been relat...
Source: Alzheimer's Reading Room, The - Category: Dementia Authors: Source Type: blogs