Problems in completing financial tasks and financial management difficulties among aging adults could be an early sign of dementia, reveals a new study.
Results of Duke University’s clinical research linked the accumulation of protein deposits or amyloid plaques in the brain to declining financial management skills. Some people, as they grow older, can develop amyloid plaques. Those with Alzheimer’s disease, in particular, have higher plaque concentrations in memory-responsible regions of the brain, but these may also be present in cognitively healthy people.
The study says it’s a common mistaken belief that financial difficulties can occur only in the late stages of dementia, but it can occur early and with very subtle changes.
“The more we know the economic decision-making capacity of adolescents and how it can alter with aging, the better we can educate society on these problems,” said P. Murali Doraiswamy, MBBS, the study’s senior author and Duke psychiatry and geriatrics professor.
Financial Tests For Alzheimer’s Patients
A longitudinal study that uses imagery to measure beta-amyloid deposits in the brain was tested by the researchers team. The said study— the Neuroimaging Initiative for Alzheimer’s Disease — had 243 participants aged 55 to 90. They were divided into three groups of patients: cognitively healthy individuals with mild cognitive impairment and those with mild memory impairment.
The economic abilities of the respondents were evaluated using the Short Form Financial Capacity Instrument, a test that measures monetary calculation abilities, economic ideas, and the use of check register and bank statement. The exam is sufficiently susceptible to detect even subtle modifications and can also assist physicians track the cognitive function of an individual over time.
Test findings showed decreasing efficiency even at the earliest point of memory impairment, an early phase that could lead to more pronounced dementia. Doraiswamy said that a predictor of dementia might be as useful as the traditional memory exams. The study will be published in the Alzheimer’s Disease Prevention Journal.
Dementia Is Deadly
Dementia is a cognitive disease that can trigger the capacity of a person to believe and operate usually to have long-term impacts. Dementia-linked fatalities have more than increased in the United States over the previous two centuries.
“Overall, age-adjusted dementia mortality rates risen from 30,5 fatalities per 100,000 in 2000 to 66,7 in 2017,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. The number of fatalities from dementia were assessed based on variables like age, gender, and ethnicity. The study said that women’s death rates were greater than males.
“If you have not died of heart disease or cancer or anything else and you reach the very earliest ages, your risk of developing dementia is greater,” said CDC health statistician Ellen Kramarow.
