Simple test can help doctors spot Alzheimer's disease early

• A simple word-memory test may accurately detect the earliest stages of Alzheimer's disease and improve treatment of the disease, according to a new study.
• Researchers found that by weighting individual performance on a standard 10-word recall test used to diagnose Alzheimer's disease, they were able to significantly improve the accuracy of the test in detecting mild cognitive impairment.
• Mild cognitive impairment -- subtle but measurable memory problems -- is the earliest clinical stage of Alzheimer's disease and related memory disorders and is typically followed by dementia.
• People who suffer from mild cognitive impairment have memory problems that are greater than normal for their age but otherwise show no symptoms of dementia.
• Spotting Alzheimer's disease at this early stage is important because there is an irreversible loss of function for every month that mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease goes untreated.
• In the study, which appears in the March 29 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers looked at adding correspondence analysis to the standard word-memory test that has been used by National Institute of Aging for more than 20 years to improve the detection of mild cognitive impairment.
• The test consists of a series of memory trials using a 10-word list.
• The individual is shown the words on the list and then asked to recall them after performing another, unrelated task or after a delay.
• Usually the score is calculated by recording the number of words recalled in each of the four trials.
• But in this study, researchers weighted the scores based on the individual's performance on the intermediate and delayed recall portion of the tests.
• The results showed using these weighted scores increased the sensitivity of the test by 12% in detecting mild cognitive impairment.