Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia and may contribute to 60–70% of global dementia cases, which stand at 50 million presently with nearly 10 million new cases reported every year, as per the World Health Organisation.
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is one of the worst conditions causing dementia in millions of people across the world and researchers have been intensely involved in identifying the symptoms for early prediction of the disease before it sets in and cause decline of cognitive function and the inability to carry out daily life activities.
As part of the ongoing research on AD, a new study suggests that the worsening of anxiety symptoms could represent the early manifestation of this neurodegenerative condition in older adults.
The research team from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, US, found that increasing symptoms of anxiety could be linked with higher levels of amyloid beta, which starts accumulating in a patient’s brain decades before Alzheimer’s disease progresses and causes irreparable damage to the memory and other important mental functions.
The team looked beyond the results of earlier studies which suggest that depression and other neuropsychiatric symptoms may be predictors of Alzheimer’s disease progression during its preclinical phase.
“Rather than just looking at depression as a total score, we looked at specific symptoms such as anxiety. When compared to other symptoms of depression such as sadness or loss of interest, anxiety symptoms increased over time in those with higher amyloid beta levels in the brain,” says study’s first author Nancy Donovan of Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
“This suggests that anxiety symptoms could be a manifestation of Alzheimer’s disease prior to the onset of cognitive impairment. If further research substantiates anxiety as an early indicator, it would be important for not only identifying people early on with the disease, but also, treating it and potentially slowing or preventing the disease process early on,” she adds.
To find the link between Alzheimer’s disease and increasing level of anxiety, which is common in older people, the scientists used the data from the Harvard Aging Brain Study.
The research findings, published recently in the American Journal of Psychiatry, suggest that worsening anxious-depressive symptoms may be an early predictor of elevated amyloid beta levels — and, in turn Alzheimer’s disease.
However, further studies need to be undertaken to determine whether increasing depressive symptoms give rise to clinical depression and dementia stages of Alzheimer’s disease over time.
