Difficulty for Early Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease: Especially MCI Level

Abstract

Early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is very difficult. The main characteristic of neuro-image in AD is the atrophy of hippocampus and the main symptoms of AD is memory disturbance. However, we speculate these two sticks cause overdiagnosis or underdiagnoses of AD because the atrophy of hippocampus is not specific to AD and memory disturbance is not the first symptom in AD. As for memory disturbance, this symptom is not only unspecific to AD but also not the first symptom in AD. Moreover, we speculate that there two situations when the pathological symptoms occur at MCI in AD.On situation is when patients with AD at the MCI stage relax, at which time these patients show apathy. The other situation is when they are more stressed than usual. In this situation, these patients will be upset or panic. Therefore, the most important is hearing family of caregiver whether the patient shows apathy when he or she is relax (e.g., when they watch television, they fall asleep) and whether he or she is confused or panic when he or she is more stressed than usual.