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

• DOI: 10.1016/j.jalz.2014.12.007
• Publication Date: 2015-04-26T03:02:37Z
• Authors: Josephine Barnes; Bradford C. Dicke...; Chris Frost; Lize C. Jiskoot; David Wolk; Wiesje M. van der...
• Keywords: Adult; Male; Databases, Factual; Datasets as Topic; Neuropsychological Tests; 03 medical and health sciences; Age; Clinical neurology history; Cognition; 0302 clinical medicine; Neuropsychology; Alzheimer Disease; Humans; Age of Onset; Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Behavior; Alzheimer's disease; Middle Aged; United States; 3. Good health; Logistic Models; Female; First symptoms; EMC COEUR-09

AbstractIntroductionDetermining the relationship between age and Alzheimer's disease (AD) presentation is important to improve understanding and provide better patient services.MethodsWe 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.ResultsThe 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).DiscussionThere 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.