Having an outsider assess memory could be a low-cost method to see if a person is at risk for dementia, according to new research.
A team from the Florida State University College of Medicine evaluated data from 12,749 people who were part of a study on aging. They found that when interviewers spotted deficits in memory, it was a good predictor for who would later develop dementia.
Researchers followed the subjects, who were all 50 and older, over a 15-year span. The findings were published in July in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. Interviews took place in 2006 when participants had a normal range of cognitive function. Participants had at least one follow-up assessment between 2008 and 2020.
Each one-point increase in poor memory (on a one-to-five scale) was linked to a 40% increase for dementia during the follow-up period. In-person and phone interviews didn’t matter in terms of results, the researchers noted.
Notably, the association for poor memory and dementia was even stronger in people who had the best objective memory performance (recalling a number of words from a long list) as well as subjective memory (how good someone thinks their memory is). Testing both forms of memory can be useful to spot cognitive deficits before a person receives a dementia diagnosis.
Rating an individual’s memory could be a useful tool, in addition to others, to get an idea of who will develop dementia, Angelina Sutin, PhD, a professor and author, said in a statement.
“This simple rating by an interviewer is predictive of who develops dementia, particularly when traditional measures of memory function do not necessarily detect memory deficits,” Sutin said. “And the association is similar across age, sex, race, ethnicity and education, which suggests it may be broadly predictive across populations.”
Sutin added: “Overall, we believe these findings show that interviewer-rated memory was a good marker of future dementia among the most cognitively healthy.”
