Alzheimer's Disease and Personality Changes
How would this new method help diagnosis?
“This proposed new checklist describes and helps identify a new clinical stage in the disease and has the potential to represent a paradigm shift in formal neurodegeneration testing — away from a sole focus on the memory to also encompass behavior. By looking beyond memory-related issues to closely evaluate the behavioral issues included in the checklist, physicians could reach a more efficient and accurate diagnosis, sooner” said Maria Carrillo, chief science officer at the Alzheimer’s Association. Researchers hope this checklist with clear up any confusion relating to behavioral and personality changes. “We propose that the utility of the MBI-C — once it is refined and vetted by the Alzheimer's community — is significant not only clinically, but also in research.In addition, we may be able to create or derive a version that can be provided to family members of older adults to determine the nature and extent of neuropsychiatric symptoms and to measure changes over time. From a research perspective, the scale may prove to be usable in biomarker and neuroimaging studies in pre-dementia clinical states, in epidemiological studies of community samples, and in clinical sample observational studies” said Dr. Zahinoor Ismail, clinician scientist at the University of Calgary.
