However, he later suggested that both types of senile forgetfulness could represent the extremes of a single underlying pathological process.2 The benign character of this condition was further questioned by O’Brien et al,3 who found that individuals with this diagnosis progressed to dementia at, a rate of 9% per year. An ad hoc National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) work group4 proposed the term age-associated memory impairment (AAMI) to refer to the memory decline in otherwise healthy aged individuals and listed Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical specific criteria for this condition (Table I). These criteria define impairment respective to the healthy young, and allow all aged individuals to be diagnosed with

AAMI provided they meet the criteria in Table I. Larrabee and Crook5 reported that, the frequency of AAMI ranged from 26% for individuals aged between 30 and 39 years to 85% for individuals aged 80 years or older. Ratcliff and Saxton6 pointed out. that a diagnosis of AAMI does not imply a nonprogressive disorder, but could be an early stage of dementia for a subset, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical of individuals with

this diagnosis. Recent evidence suggests that cognitive deficits in AAMI may be not. restricted Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical to memory functions: Hânninen et al7 found that a group of AAMI individ-uals were impaired in three out of four tasks assessing GDC 0449 frontal lobe functions, and suggested that, the label of AAMI may include a heterogeneous group of individuals. Table I Diagnostic criteria for age-associated memory impairment. WAIS, Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale; MMSE, Mini-Mental State Examination. Adapted from reference 4 with permission: Crook T, Bartus Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical RT, Ferris SH, Whitehouse P, Cohen GD, Gershon S. Age-associated … Levy8 proposed the term age-associated cognitive decline Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical for those

elderly individuals with deficits in memory and other cognitive domains, who do not meet criteria for dementia. The diagnosis of age-associated cognitive decline requires a report, by an individual or reliable documentation of cognitive decline, an insidious onset or decline for at least 6 months, and impairment in two or more cognitive domains, such as memory, language, attention, concentration, thought, or visual functioning. ‘line cognitive impairment needs to be documented by abnormal performance on cognitive testing, and performance may be at least one standard deviation below the mean value for the appropriate population, in the context of minimal impairment many in activities of daily living. Exclusion criteria are psychiatric disorders, such as depression, organic amnestic syndrome, delirium, postencephalitic syndrome, postconcussion syndrome, or cognitive impairment related to drug effects. Koivisto et al9 examined the prevalence of age-related cognitive decline in a randomly selected population from eastern Finland and found that. 29% met. criteria for this diagnosis.