Alzheimer’s disease is very debilitating. However, correctly taken care of, some affected patients will survive for 10 or 15 years after the announcement of the disease, while others have only a few months to live. This of course depends on the age of the person at the time of diagnosis. Researchers have succeeded in identifying other factors that can predict the life expectancy of patients.
The Alzheimer’s disease usually occurs around the age of 65. It affects more than 20% of individuals over 80 in France. Its most famous manifestations are memory loss and loss of autonomy. Even if people with the disease do not die directly from it, it has a direct influence on thelife expectancy. For example, pneumonia is the most common cause of death in patients with Alzheimer’s disease: swallowing disorders often occurring in patients promote lung infections.
The life expectancy from the announcement of the diagnosis varies enormously from one person to another. This can be from 3 to 12 years on average. What factors influence it? Few data on the subject are currently available in the literature. A team from a University of Texas looked into the matter and published their results in the specialized journal Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.
Cognitive decline is the most predictive factor
Data from the records of 764 patients who died of Alzheimer’s diseaseAlzheimer’s between 2005 and 2015 were analyzed. Brain autopsies were carried out to confirm that the patients had the disease. The people included in the study survived between 1 and 131 months after the announcement of the diagnosis. The authors of the study were able to identify seven factors that predict the life expectancy of individuals. The factor with the most statistical weight was the patient’s overall cognitive performance at the time of diagnosis. The greater the cognitive decline, the shorter the life expectancy.
Other factors for a shorter life expectancy were male sex, older age, color whiteness, the presence of neuropsychiatric symptoms, abnormal neurological test results and functional impairment.
Information for families
Predicting the life expectancy of patients with Alzheimer’s disease could be a great help for families. This disease is often experienced very painfully by those around you.
Knowing in advance how much time is left while knowing, of course, that this is only a hypothesis can help to organize. You don’t plan things the same way when there’s a year or ten years of life left. The authors plan to continue their work with larger population samples in order to clarify these initial results.
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