Frontal lobe function in elderly patients with Alzheimer's disease and caregiver burden.

Abstract

Understanding of the relationship between caregiver burden and the degree of behavioural deficits in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) is relatively limited. Therefore, it is worthwhile to examine the correlations between the various relevant factors to improve the efficacy of care for patients with AD. The aim of this study was to investigate the specific contributions of frontal lobe dysfunction in AD patients to caregiver burden, while controlling for other predictor variables. Participants included 30 pairs of caregivers and patients with AD. The Zarit Burden Interview and Frontal Assessment Battery were used to measure the caregiver burden and patients' frontal lobe function, respectively. To investigate the effects of frontal lobe dysfunction on caregiver burden, hierarchical regression equations with steps incorporating additional predictor variables were fitted. We also performed a correlation analysis between the individual subdomains of the Zarit Burden Interview and the predictor variables. Our study suggests that the degree of frontal lobe dysfunction in AD patients predicts their caregiver burden, when other factors of daily functional limitations and neuropsychiatric symptoms are controlled. Daily functional limitations and neuropsychiatric symptoms affected caregivers' psychosocial burden, whereas frontal lobe dysfunction affected caregivers' burden due to the increase in the dependency of the patients. Our findings indicate that to ameliorate the disabilities of patients and reduce caregiver burden, there is a need for interventions that focus on psychosocial burdens, as shown in previous studies, as well as on excessive dependency due to frontal lobe dysfunction.