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February 7th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda MONDAY, Feb. 6 (HealthDay News) — New guidelines for diagnosing
the mental decline that can come with several diseases of aging may create
confusion among doctors and patients about who has early Alzheimer’s
disease and who simply has mild cognitive impairment, a new report
warns.
Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a mental decline in its earliest
stages that’s not a normal part of aging. Under previous guidelines, a
patient was considered to have MCI if he or she had marked, but mild,
memory problems but was otherwise functioning normally, explained Dr. John
Morris, director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Washington
University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Recently, the U.S. National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer’s
Association convened a work group to update criteria for MCI. Their
revised guidelines cast a wider net for what qualifies. “As MCI was
studied further, it was found that people with MCI often had other
impairments in reasoning, visual-spatial skills and attention,” Morris
said.
Under the new guidelines, people with MCI can have also have problems
doing daily activities, such as driving without getting disoriented,
remembering to pay bills and paying the proper amount, and cooking safely.
People can have MCI even if they depend on aids or assistance to complete
those tasks.
Previously, what distinguished MCI from dementia was that ability to
function, but the new guidelines blur the distinction, Morris noted.
“Now, there is no distinguishing line between mild cognitive impairment
and mild Alzheimer’s disease dementia,” said Morris, who lays out his
argument in an analysis published online Feb. 6 in the Archives of
Neurology. “Broadening the criteria for MCI overlaps so much with the
diagnosis of very mild Alzheimer’s disease that physicians won’t know
whether to call it very mild Alzheimer‘s or MCI. It adds confusion to the
field.”
Morris’ study included more than 17,500 people with a mean age of 75
who had either normal memory and thinking skills, MCI or Alzheimer’s
disease dementia.
He concluded that 99.8 percent of patients currently diagnosed with
“very mild” Alzheimer’s dementia and just under 93 percent of those
diagnosed with “mild” Alzheimer’s dementia could be reclassified as having
MCI, based on the revised criteria.
Some 5.4 million Americans have Alzheimer’s, according to the
Alzheimer’s Association.
While MCI can be a first sign of the Alzheimer’s, it’s not necessarily
so. Other causes of MCI can include medications, stroke or depression,
Morris explained.
Diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease is typically done through a clinical
examination with a neurologist. Neuroimaging tests are conducted, to rule
out other conditions that might have caused the mental decline, such as a
stroke or brain tumor.
Other means of diagnosing Alzheimer’s include a spinal tap that looks
for certain biomarkers in the spinal fluid or specialized MRIs that can
detect amyloid protein, which is associated with Alzheimer’s. However,
these are not typically available outside of large metropolitan hospitals
or as part of medical studies.
Dr. William Thies, chief medical and scientific officer for the
Alzheimer’s Association, said researchers now understand that Alzheimer’s
is a continuum of changes in the brain that begin years, and possibly
decades, before the first MCI symptoms are noticed. Alzheimer’s itself,
Thies said, represents “the very last, devastating changes of the
disease.”
“You can do a lot of damage to the brain before it will not do all the
functions it’s supposed to do,” Thies said. “There is a period of time
when you will have silent changes in your brain structure and function, a
pre-symptomatic period when the changes have already begun.”
Because Alzheimer’s is a continuum, that means that drawing a line
between MCI and Alzheimer’s is, by definition, “artificial,” he noted.
“We recognize those lines are artificial, and at the moment because the
criteria are relatively new, they remain somewhat fuzzy,” Thies said.
“This is an area where we will have continued discussion over the next few
years to establish consistently where to categorize folks.”
When Alzheimer’s is believed to be the underlying cause of MCI,
physicians can offer up a diagnosis of “MCI due to AD [Alzheimer’s
disease],” Morris said.
Even though the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s is more devastating than MCI,
it’s important for patients and their families to hear the truth, so that
they can come to terms with the diagnosis and make the necessary plans,
Morris said.
“When we think the MCI is caused by underlying Alzheimer’s disease, we
should go ahead and call it very early Alzheimer’s,” Morris said. “It’s
artificial to call it MCI.”
According to background information in the article, 30 percent to 60
percent of doctors conceal an Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis because of
causing distress to the family and the patient, even though 94 percent of
the same doctors would reveal a diagnosis of terminal cancer.
Dr. Gayatri Devi, an attending neurologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in
New York City, said that as a result of the new criteria, “large numbers
of patients will be classified as having mild cognitive impairment when in
fact they’re suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.”
“This complicates research in the area, and confuses patients and
families, not to mention physicians, who’ve relied on functional
independence as the demarcation between Alzheimer’s disease and MCI,” Devi
said.
More information
The U.S.
National Institute on Aging has more on Alzheimer’s.
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