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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Weight loss precedes dementia in community-dwelling older adults | | Author(s) | Elizabeth Barrett-Connor, Sharon L Edelstein, Jody Corey-Bloom |
| Journal title | Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, vol 44, no 10, October 1996 |
| Pages | pp 1147-1152 |
| Keywords | Dementia ; Nutrition ; Malnutrition ; Weight ; Living in the community ; Longitudinal surveys ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | Low body weight is a common nutritional problem in people with late-stage dementia of the Alzheimer's type. This longitudinal study examined whether the weight loss associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD) precedes or follows the dementia. A group of community-dwelling older men (134) and women (165) were followed for 20 years before they were diagnosed as cognitively intact or demented. A repeated measures analysis was used to compare weight change in those who developed AD with those who remained cognitively intact. Findings showed that there were 36 men and 24 women diagnosed with probable or possible AD, and were considered to have mild to moderate dementia. Those who developed dementia were older than those diagnosed as cognitively intact. In age-adjusted analyses, both men and women who were later diagnosed with AD had a significant decrease in weight after the baseline visit, but there was no significant weight loss in those remained cognitively intact. These differences were not explained by lifestyle, depression, or other illness. It was concluded that weight loss precedes mild to moderate dementia; early weight loss is therefore unlikely to be a consequence of AD patients being unable or unwilling to eat. (AKM). |
| Accession Number | CPA-970812212 A |
| Classmark | EA: CF: CSM: 4X6: K4: 3J: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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