THE COURSE OF ALZHEIMERS-DISEASE AND NORM AL AGING - RESULTS FORM A PROSPECTIVE MULTIDIMENSIONAL STUDY

A total of 30 patients with clinically diagnosed Alzheimer's disease a nd 55 healthy, age-approximated controls were followed up over a 2-yea r period to compare the course of functional and cognitive impairment, quantitative morphological and functional brain changes. No remarkabl e changes were observed within the control group in any of these modal ities. There were significant differences between patients and control s at the first examination: Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), 16.1 +/- 7.3 compared with 28.7 +/- 1.4; left lateral ventricle 2.7 +/- 1. 1% versus 1.6 +/- 0.7% of the total intracranial volume; right lateral ventricle 2.7 +/- 1.4% versus 1.4 +/- 0.4%; absolute delta-power 1.1 +/- 0.3 versus 0.9 +/- 0.2 mu V-2; and absolute theta-power 1.1 +/- 0. 3 versus 0.8 +/- 0.2 mu V-2 (means +/- standard deviation). In the pat ient group, scores on the Blessed dementia rating scale deteriorated f rom 10.6 +/- 6.1 to 17.9 +/- 9.6; the MMSE decreased by 8.0 +/- 3.7; t he left lateral ventricle volume increased by 0.9 +/- 0.7%, the right by 0.9 +/- 0.7% of the total intracranial volume; absolute delta-power increased by 0.2 +/- 0.4 mu V-2 and theta-power by 0.1 +/- 0.3 mu V-2 . We could not confirm a relationship between age, age at onset or apo lipoprotein E4 gene dose and the rate of clinical change. High initial Blessed dementia scores were correlated with more severe ventricular enlargement, and delta-theta increase during the follow-up period. Hig h initial theta-power predicted more severe functional and cognitive d eterioration. To our knowledge, this is the first longitudinal study r eporting quantitative clinical, morphological and EEG-changes measured in two points in time in patients and non-demented controls.