Editorial: The Dementias

Abstract

done with no worsening of symptoms. Alberto Marcos and colleagues present a Spanish study of neuropsychological markers of mild cognitive impairment progressing to Alzheimer’s disease. They find that the CAMCOG and memory and perception cognitive screening were the optimum screening tools to discover which patients will go on to acquire Alzheimer’s disease and which will not. This is important because early treatment is so crucial. Nagararatnam et al point out that 38% of patients in their study had accusatory behavior (average age of 74 years, and a male to female ratio of 2.6:1). This behavior is more prevalent in higher stages of dementia and is more often accompanied by hallucinations. They feel it would be more useful to view these behaviors as symptoms rather than as being primary. Sato and colleagues find that advanced glycation end products (AGE) are an important factor in diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease. They discuss the molecular mechanisms of Alzheimer’s disease and especially the toxic AGE-receptor AGE system.