R S Doody

..One large-scale clinical trial suggests that it has sufficient benefit and safety to join donepezil as a current standard of AD therapy...

..The slowest progression group also survives longer. This baseline measure should be considered in the design of long duration Alzheimer's disease clinical trials...

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..Large and diverse dementia patient cohorts can further a variety of research programs aimed at improving diagnosis, treatment, and meaningful survival in AD...

..There was excellent agreement between independent physician raters (rho = 0.95, p < 0.001). Caregiver estimates of duration were usually shorter because of failure to relate the first symptoms to the onset of disease...

..Therefore, additional therapies for Alzheimer's disease still need to be developed that include more tolerable agents with alternative mechanisms of action and broader efficacy...

..To compare rates of cognitive decline between probable Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients treated with long-duration cholinesterase inhibitors (ChE-Is) and those who remained untreated...

..3%). These findings support the safety of donepezil in patients with aMCI. When compared with other studies, however, the data suggest that patients with Alzheimer's tolerate donepezil better than patients with MCI...

..Safety profiles suggested excellent safety and tolerability, with no differences between the severity groups. CONCLUSIONS: Memantine consistently benefited patients in all stages of AD and was well-tolerated...

..Further refinements would come by demonstration of how substantial and how enduring the antidementia benefits are...

..The APO epsilon4 allele is correlated with amyloid angiopathy and other neuropathologies in Alzheimer's disease and could be associated with white matter changes. If so, there should be a dose effect...

..Treatment of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) with cholinesterase inhibitors may improve symptoms...

..In this article we review the natural history of AD and evidence for the effectiveness of the treatments indicated for AD: donepezil, galantamine, rivastigmine, and memantine...

..CONCLUSIONS: Donepezil is an effective and safe drug for the long-term symptomatic treatment of mild to moderately severe AD for up to 144 weeks (2.8 years), and sustained treatment may confer some advantages...

..Higher doses of donepezil, if safe and well tolerated, might provide further benefits for patients with AD...

..Years of education and measures of general intellectual function (IQ) are highly correlated. It is important to determine whether there is a relationship between education and AD outcomes that is independent of IQ...

..To evaluate baseline characteristics and conversion to dementia in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) subtypes...

..81, P =.002). CONCLUSION: An easily calculable rate of early disease progression can classify patients as rapid, intermediate, or slow progressors with good predictive value, even at initial presentation...

..This review will conclude with a discussion of how new data on AD treatments will potentially change current treatment parameters...

..The lack of a gold standard to measure self-neglect has hampered efforts to study this phenomenon...

..The current investigation used item response theory (IRT) analyses to assess the measurement properties of the ADAS-cog across the range of cognitive dysfunction in AD...

..To examine factors predicting development of aggression...

..This study examined factors affecting deficit awareness (DA) and the effects of diagnostic status (dementia and depression), measurement method and DA dimension on these relationships...

..Outcome measures for each study design will depend upon the characteristics of the study...

..Alzheimer disease (AD) has high heritability for occurrence and age at onset (AAO). We performed a cases-only genome-wide CNV association study for age at onset of AD...

..More effective treatments are needed. We assessed the safety, tolerability, and efficacy of dimebon in the treatment of patients with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's disease...

..However, findings regarding an association between the APOE epsilon4 allele and the rate of decline in AD have been mixed...

..Vitamin E at a dose of 2,000 IU per day has been shown to delay Alzheimer's disease (AD) progression, but recent studies have questioned the safety of this dose level and the overall efficacy of vitamin E in AD treatment...

..The purpose of this study is to examine baseline differences and annualized cognitive and functional change scores in mild Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients with and without impaired activities of daily living (ADL)...

..These findings may reflect a tendency for less severely demented patients to exhibit normal age-related changes in blood pressure, whereas abnormal patterns may develop with increased dementia severity...

..Behavior modification, scheduled toileting, and prompted voiding reduce urinary incontinence (Standard). Functional independence can be increased by graded assistance, skills practice, and positive reinforcement (Guideline)...

..Our findings are consistent with previous studies and provide compelling evidence that survival from onset or diagnosis of dementia depends more on age than any other factor...

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..However, these clinical guidelines have not been updated in the past few years...