Thanks to video recordings, researchers have shown that the behavior of people with Alzheimer’s deteriorates at the onset of the disease. Relatives must be particularly vigilant.
The first forgetfulness is not the only symptom of the onset of Alzheimer’s. Researchers have just shown that the degradation of driving was also a strong signal.
The study is small, but conclusive. 20 drivers with early stage Alzheimer’s disease and 20 others in good health were assessed and compared using video recordings. Psychologists have paid particular attention to the “self-regulatory behavior” of patients, that is to say their ability to adapt driving speed, to respect safety distances, to change lanes correctly and to anticipate. or plan actions appropriately. All critical safety events (accident, near miss, incident) were also listed.
Self-regulatory behavior
As a result, self-regulatory behavior “was of lower quality in people with Alzheimer’s disease,” says the trial. In addition, sick patients had twice as many accidents as healthy drivers. In addition, the patients do not seem to have been aware of the deterioration in the quality of their driving, the entourage having to be particularly vigilant vis-à-vis the elderly people being transported.
Today 900,000 people live with Alzheimer’s disease in France, and it could affect 1.3 million patients by 2020. Mainly affecting people aged 80 and over, this neurodegenerative disease causes progressive and irreversible dysfunction of the neurons of the brain, which eventually die.
No treatment after 40 years of research
Beyond the recent controversy, the delisting of anti-Alzheimer drugs reflects a sad reality: almost 40 years after the disease was identified, there is still no treatment to cure it. “The brain is a very complicated problem. It is an organ which operates 24 hours a day, consuming less energy than a light bulb. No computer is capable of reproducing this”, explains Philippe Amouyel, doctor -researcher specializing in cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases, also Managing Director of the Alzheimer Foundation.
“Second, Alzheimer’s disease is not an acute disease. We have just understood that it starts early, very early. For research to be effective, we should start to study the pathology 4, 5, 10 years before the first oversights appear, and follow the patients for two to three years afterwards, to see the evolution of the symptoms. ” A new study, published in The Journal of Neuroscience, has just demonstrated that the accumulation of the beta-amyloid protein begins very slowly, years before the biomarkers become abnormal – we are talking here about 10, 20, 30 years before the first clinical signs.
.
