A group of researchers who recently presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Toronto have developed a new checklist that focuses on detecting personality changes as an indicator of dementia and helps diagnose “Mild Behavioral Impairment (MBI),” which may be a predictor of the disease. The excerpt below is from an article on the checklist from Medical Daily, and we hope you’ll read it and click through for the full article. If you have questions about this and are in the greater Cleveland area, please give us a call.
“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,” said Maria Carrillo, chief science officer at the Alzheimer’s Association, in a press release. “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.”
Research has shown that a variety of symptoms may be early signs of dementia and Alzheimer’s. A different sense of humor, for example, was identified as one in a 2015 study. Another recent study found that an impaired sense of direction was another possible sign. But many of these signs could mean other things beyond dementia, so it’s quite difficult to diagnose the early signs.