Community-based measures for early dementia: The Osaki-Tajiri Project

Kenichi Meguro

Department of Geriatric Behavioral Neurology,
Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine

For aged patients with early dementia in a community, we performed a cross-sectional study to investigate clinical features, in addition to a longitudinal study for progression to dementia. As features of cognitive functions, impairment of the attention/executive function was confirmed rather than cognitive domains. The longitudinal study showed that more progression to dementia was confirmed when CDR domains of other than memory was rated to be 0.5. No effects of living habit, internal diseases, and psychosocial intervention were confirmed. In progression to AD, generally low cognitive function and general atrophy were involved, while frontal lobe function, atrophy of the frontal/temporal lobe, and cerebral infarction were related to the progression to VaD. As the measures for aged patients with MCI, the secondary prevention system in which CDR, psychological test and MRI will be desirable.

Address correspondence to Dr. Kenichi Meguro, Department of Geriatric Behavioral Neurology, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine (2-1, Seiryo-machi, Aoba-ku, 980-8575 Sendai, Japan)