Alzheimer’s: one in two patients only suffers from mild dementia

Triggering Alzheimer’s disease does not necessarily mean suffering from severe dementia. This is the conclusion of a study conducted by researchers at Boston University (United States) and whose results were published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. According to them, more than half of the cases of Alzheimer’s disease suffer from mild dementia and only one in five patients represents a case of severe dementia.

Mild dementia in one out of two cases

To reach this conclusion, the researchers looked at data from the Framingham Heart Study (FHS), a long-term American epidemiological study that began in 1948. People participating in the FHS are between 50 and 94 years old and are likely to develop mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease. For this research, the researchers targeted people with Alzheimer’s and mild cognitive impairment over three time windows: 2004-2005, 2006-2007, and 2008-2009.

Analyzing the results, they found that 50.4% of the participants with Alzheimer’s disease were mild cases of dementia, just under a third (30.3%) of the cases were moderate and 19.3% are severe cases. Among all participants with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease, the pooled percentage was 45.2% for the combined group with mild dementia and mild cognitive impairment that later progressed to Alzheimer’s disease .

Another pathology accompanies Alzheimer’s disease

“Early intervention in cases of mild cognitive impairment or mild dementia has been the primary focus of Alzheimer’s disease research and drug development in recent years.says Rhoda Au, professor of anatomy and neurobiology at Boston University School of Medicine and corresponding author of the study. We found that about 45% of people with cognitive impairment or diagnosed with dementia associated with Alzheimer’s disease had early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Our results serve to inform the design of future research studies, such as clinical and observational studies, and enable optimal allocation of resources for policy development.”

Additionally, for the researchers, the fact that half of people living with Alzheimer’s disease have mild disease underscores the need for research and interventions to slow the decline or prevent the progression of the disease. “It is crucial to determine the risk factors or develop therapies that could alter the trajectory of the disease in order to improve the quality of life of individuals and to alleviate the socio-economic burden”, implores Rhoda Au.