Man diagnoses Alzheimer’s in 5 minutes! Doctors hate him! Click here to find out why!
Just this past weekend, my 80 year old grandmother had her first major amnesic event. Over the course of multiple hours, she no longer recognized my grandfather, her husband of 50+years. She also reverted to behaviour and accomplishing tasks such as knitting and cleaning, which she had rarely done in recent years. Needless to say, my family was quite shaken up by this event.
The discussion immediately started about possible causes. Is grandmother amnesic, is she suffering from dementia, severe memory loss, maybe Alzheimer’s? As the only member of the family that studies the brain, a lot of these questions were directed my way! In order to help inform the family, I spent the next few hours doing some research on the topic and came across an interesting article titled “5-Min Test to Diagnose Alzheimer’s”. Being skeptical of this title and thinking that it was just some more nonsense clickbait in the style of countless adds such as “Woman loses 10 pounds in minutes, diet companies hate her! Find out how by clicking here”, I looked into the research behind this and traced it back to a group of researchers at Emery University, that have developed a battery of tests intended for quick and reliable testing at home.
The first part of the test asks the subject to repeat back three words that are randomly chosen by the person administering the test. Whether or not the subject is able to repeat these words is meant to reflect on the state of their short-term memory. The second task involves asking the subject to draw a clock in order to test their visuospatial ability, since deficits in this ability have been shown to be one of the primary symptoms of patients in the early stages of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and for those with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Thirdly, subjects are asked to repeat the three words from the first task, once again as a test of memory. Finally, the last part of this test requires that the person administrating the test rate the subject on a scale between 0 (Normal) and 3 (Dependent), for different functional activities such as writing checks, shopping, cooking, etc. If the subject receives a total score over 9, this is a possible indication of some sort of cognitive impairment.
One of the major positives of this set of tests is that it has the potential to be extremely beneficial while being very quick and inexpensive to administer. As things currently stand, this test is meant to happen prior to a clinical visit, with the administration and analysis of the test to be done by someone close to the potential patient. The group that developed this set of tests has shown that roughly 80% of the time, results from these tests can accurately predict the extent (if any) of cognitive impairment found in the subject. 80% is quite good, but it’s not perfect. People that are administering these tests are instructed that if the subject performs poorly, they should contact a doctor for an appointment, but “performing poorly” to someone without medical or scientific training might be too subjective.
I worry that allowing people outside of the medical or scientific community to administer these tests will end up causing unnecessary stress and anxiety in individuals that are trying to diagnose themselves or someone close to them. These tests are an inexpensive tool that can help in diagnosis, but the administration of tasks and analysis of results should be left to medical professionals.
