Younger Dementia Patients Experience Different problems

While memory loss is thought to be a classical first sign of Alzheimer’s disease, some middle-aged people and younger seniors may initially experience different cognitive problems - such as trouble with language or problem solving, a large U.S. study suggests.

This can be a scary experience as most of us older workers have probably already seen our younger counterparts figure things out faster in the workforce.

In a new study, researchers reviewed data on early symptoms for almost 8,000 Alzheimer’s patients and found one in four people under age 60 had a chief complaint unrelated to memory, although memory was still the common problem overall.

Inside the brain, Alzheimer’s is associated with abnormal clumps known as amyloid plaques and tangled bundles of fibers, often called tau or tangles. Scientists suspect that the damage begins in the hippocampus, a region of the brain involved in memory. 

A new study reviewed neurological test results from a large U.S. database of Alzheimer’s patients to see whether the early symptoms people reported differed by age.

On average, patients were 75 years old when they first sought treatment for Alzheimer’s, though they ranged in age from 36 to 110. Most of them had mild to moderate forms of dementia. 

Among the patients who reported cognitive difficulties as their first symptoms, the proportion citing something other than memory (like confusion, getting lost, or not being able to find the right word) shrank with increasing age. One in five patients in their 60s cited difficulties unrelated to memory, but this dropped to one in 10 for people in their 70s. 

So what does this mean? That at first we're just confused but eventually we just give up and accept that we're useless and old? Perhaps another study will tell.

Understanding how Alzheimer’s or symptoms of dementia might surface in younger patients is crucial for diagnosing them sooner and starting treatment at a point when it can do the most good. Unfortunately,

the best available medicine today can only turn back the clock, reversing symptoms enough to give patients the same abilities they had up to a year earlier.

Right now with the medicines available you can’t slow the clock down, you can just reset it. It would be much better if we could take a pill to dial our memory back to repeat a year in our 60s - rather than in our 80s. Perhaps science will find a way.

You can download a free form for helping you see the warning signs of dementia on:

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