Prevention of and Early Intervention for Cognitive Decline Due to Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders

An expected consequence of aging is the decline of so-called "fluid" cognitive abilities, including attention, processing speed, working memory, episodic memory, and executive functions. An average 85-year-old is not expected to perform as quickly or as accurately on tasks requiring these cognitive abilities as an average 25-year-old. As a result, everyday cognitive errors and inefficiencies such as slow word retrieval or walking into a room and forgetting one's intention, which happen to everyone, 3 become more frequent and significant with age. The biological and cognitive mechanisms of age-related cognitive decline are multifactorial and not entirely understood, but a growing body of evidence describes risk factors that can be mitigated and protective factors that can be enhanced to preserve cognition or slow the rate of decline. 6 These same protective factors for brain health may be effective in mitigating the impact that Alzheimer's disease has on a person's daily functioning, potentially delaying their transition to dementia. zheimer's disease (AD) is not a normal consequence of aging, although it does affect 10% of adults over 65, including 32% of those over 85, making it the most common cause of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia in older adults. 8 MCI is a state at which a person has greater cognitive decline than expected for their age, but their cognitive weaknesses have not overpowered their ability to compensate for them. 9 A person with dementia, on the other hand, is not able to successfully compensate for their cognitive weaknesses and therefore has functional challenges in everyday life and during completion of activities of daily living. Although symptom-alleviating drugs have been approved by the FDA, there are unfortunately no curative or disease-modifying pharmacological treatments for MCI or dementia from AD at this time.