 | | | | Related Healthscout Videos | |
|
(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Occasional forgetfulness is not only frustrating -- it could also signal brain volume loss.
According to a recent study, even though people may not have memory deficits on dementia tests, they could still have smaller brain volume in the hippocampus -- a part of the brain important for memory and one of the first areas to be damaged by Alzheimers disease.
Text Continues Below
For this study, researchers examined 500 patients in an outpatient neurology clinic. Four hundred fifty three of the 500 patients reported occasional memory or thinking problems, like forgetting an appointment or a friends name. The brains of all 500 patients were scanned to measure the size of the hippocampus. Researchers found on average, the hippocampus had a volume of 6.7 milliliters in those with occasional memory problems, compared to 7.1 milliliters in people with no memory problems.
These occasional, subjective memory complaints could be the earliest sign of problems with memory and thinking skills and we were able to discover that these subjective memory complaints were linked to smaller brain volumes, study author Frank-Erik de Leeuw, M.D., a neurologist and clinical epidemiologist at Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre in the Netherlands, was quoted as saying. Because occasional memory lapses were so common, though, much more work needs to be done to use such complaints diagnostically.
To strengthen this possible brain volume connection, researchers say all patients will be followed up in the next few years to monitor their development of Alzheimers disease.
SOURCE: Neurology, 2008
Sign up for a free weekly e-mail on Medical Breakthroughs called First to Know by clicking here.
This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, who offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, go to: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.
|
.gif)
