Cognitive Functioning Impacts Health, Life. Better Monitoring Emerges as Critical

by

New Research Links Mild Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment (MCI) to Increased Iso­la­tion and Risk of Death (AAIC press release):

- “Two stud­ies pre­sent­ed today at the Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence® 2012 (AAIC® 2012) in Van­cou­ver pro­vide evi­dence of con­nec­tions between mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment (MCI) and neg­a­tive health out­comes – increased iso­la­tion and death.”
— “Cog­ni­tive impair­ment of any kind is seri­ous, and requires increased med­ical and per­son­al atten­tion,” said Ronald Petersen, PhD, MD, a mem­ber of the Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion Board of Direc­tors. “These stud­ies val­i­date the chal­lenges of peo­ple liv­ing with MCI and their fam­i­lies and speak to the need for physi­cian edu­ca­tion to bet­ter man­age their cog­ni­tive impair­ment and its broad­er impact on a per­son­’s phys­i­cal, men­tal and social health.”
— “In our study, amnes­tic MCI was asso­ci­at­ed with a dou­bling of the risk of death,” Katz said. “Those peo­ple with oth­er types of non-mem­o­ry think­ing dif­fi­cul­ties were not at high­er risk for mortality.”
— “This fur­ther sup­ports the ben­e­fits of ear­ly detec­tion and mon­i­tor­ing of cog­ni­tive impair­ment, not only in pos­si­bly pre­vent­ing Alzheimer’s demen­tia, but also for pro­long­ing life,” Katz said.
— “An ear­ly sign of devel­op­ing demen­tia may be decreased lev­els of activ­i­ty and with­draw­al from the world at large. Jef­frey Kaye, MD, and col­leagues at Ore­gon Health & Sci­ence Uni­ver­si­ty, Port­land, used new tech­nolo­gies – includ­ing small activ­i­ty or motion sen­sors placed in the rooms of the home and con­tact sen­sors on key doors – to assess whether peo­ple with MCI spend less time out of their homes as their con­di­tion pro­gress­es over time.”

Relat­ed arti­cles: