Boston, Jan 14 (PTI) Heightened anxiety in older adultsmay be an early indicator of Alzheimer's disease, a study haswarned.
Alzheimer's disease is a neurodegenerative condition thatcauses the decline of cognitive function and the inability tocarry out daily life activities.
Past studies have suggested depression and otherneuropsychiatric symptoms may be predictors of AD'sprogression during its "preclinical" phase, during which timebrain deposits of fibrillar amyloid and pathological tauaccumulate in a patient's brain.
This phase can occur more than a decade before apatient's onset of mild cognitive impairment.
Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital in the USexamined the association of brain amyloid beta andlongitudinal measures of depression and depressive symptoms incognitively normal, older adults.
The findings, published in The American Journal ofPsychiatry, suggest that higher levels of amyloid beta may beassociated with increasing symptoms of anxiety in theseindividuals.
These results support the theory that neuropsychiatricsymptoms could be an early indicator of AD.
"Rather than just looking at depression as a total score,we looked at specific symptoms such as anxiety. When comparedto other symptoms of depression such as sadness or loss ofinterest, anxiety symptoms increased over time in those withhigher amyloid beta levels in the brain," said Nancy Donovan,from Brigham and Women's Hospital.
"This suggests that anxiety symptoms could be amanifestation of Alzheimer's disease prior to the onset ofcognitive impairment," said Donovan.
"If further research substantiates anxiety as an earlyindicator, it would be important for not only identifyingpeople early on with the disease, but also, treating it andpotentially slowing or preventing the disease process earlyon," she said.
As anxiety is common in older people, rising anxietysymptoms may prove to be most useful as a risk marker in olderadults with other genetic, biological or clinical indicatorsof high Alzheimer's disease risk.
The researchers derived data from the Harvard Aging BrainStudy, an observational study of older adult volunteers aimedat defining neurobiological and clinical changes in earlyAlzheimer's disease.
The participants included 270 community dwelling,cognitively normal men and women, between 62 and 90 years old,with no active psychiatric disorders.
Individuals also underwent baseline imaging scanscommonly used in studies of Alzheimer's disease, and annualassessments with the 30-item Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS),an assessment used to detect depression in older adults.
The researchers calculated total GDS scores as well asscores for three clusters symptoms of depression: apathy-anhedonia, dysphoria, and anxiety. These scores were looked atover a span of five years.
Researchers found that higher brain amyloid beta burdenwas associated with increasing anxiety symptoms over time incognitively normal older adults.
The results suggest that worsening anxious-depressivesymptoms may be an early predictor of elevated amyloid betalevels - and, in turn AD - and provide support for thehypothesis that emerging neuropsychiatric symptoms representan early manifestation of preclinical Alzheimer's disease. PTISNE MHNMHN.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.