Aims and objectives
Aim:
Dementia is a chronic progressive neurological disorder which affects the day to day life activity of an individual due to impairment of cognitive as well as behavioural functions(1).
Cognitive functions impairment leads to deterioration in reasoning,
memory,
language,
whereas behavioural changes include lack of interest,
hallucinations,
irritability and disturbances in sleep pattern (2).
In India about 4.1 million people,
having ages above 60 years,
suffer from dementia,
however few studies show that there might be early onset of dementia.(3) Studies have shown that there...
Methods and materials
Patient Population:
In this prospective cross sectional analytical study,
40 participants having age between 40-64 years(20 males,
mean age of 55.56 years old; 20 females,
mean age of 55.55 years old) who had complaints of memory loss and had undergone MRI testing between the period May 2018 to October 2018 were included in the study.
Patients who had lesions,
mass or had undergone neurosurgery were excluded.
MRI images of patients with artefacts and anisotropic image resolution were also excluded.
Data Acquisition:
A 3D T1 structural...
Results
The Volumetric analysis of 40 subjects between age group of 40-65 showed a frequency ratio of Male to female as 1:1 (Fig.3).
Linear Regression for male atrophic changes to age showed a positive slope of 0.432 (Fig.1) whereas for female it indicated a negative slope of -0.859 (Fig.2) with P value 0.01 and 0.02 respectively.
One way ANCOVA also showed P value < 0.05.
Conclusion
This study highlighted that females had accelerated atrophic changes (upto 30%) and as early as 42 years whereas malesshowed atrophic changes (upto 17%)as late as 50 years of age.
The study indicatesthatfemales are more suscpetible to early atrophic changes with higher frequency in age group of 40-50 compared to males.
In conclusion the age brackets for Dementia screeening needs to be revised and adjusted not just by age but also by gender to detect earlier changes with the help of volumetric analysis.
References
1.
Jessica L.
Podcasy,
MS; C.
Neill Epperson:Considering sex and gender in Alzheimer
disease and other dementias; Dialogues Clin Neurosci.
2016;18:.437-446
2.
Guendalina Bonifacio, Giovanna Zamboni; Brain imaging in dementia; Nuffield Department of Clinical Neuroscience,
University of Oxford,
Oxford,
UK; postgradmedj-2015-133759 on 1 March 2016
3.
Dementia report 2010 by ARDSI India.
4.
Michelle M Mielke,
Prashanthi Vemuri,
Walter A Rocca: Clinical epidemiology of Alzheimer’s disease: assessing sex and gender differences; dove press journal;8 january 2014