The SAGE test can be taken at home by patients, who can then share the results with their physicians to help spot early symptoms of cognitive issues such as early dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.
Researchers at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center have confirmed the feasibility and efficiency of the tool for community screening. The results are published in The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences.
Self-administered test (SAGE) helps spot early Alzheimer’s
http://medicalcenter.osu.edu/patientcare/healthcare_services/alzheimers/sage-test/Pages/index.aspx
Memory disorders researchers visited 45 community events where they asked people to take a simple, self-administered test to screen for early cognitive loss or dementia.
Of the 1047 people who took the simple pen-and-paper test, 28 percent were identified with cognitive impairment, said Dr. Douglas Scharre, who developed the test with his team at Ohio State.
The SAGE test can also be taken at home by patients, who can then share the results with their physicians to help spot early symptoms of cognitive issues such as early dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, said Scharre, who is director of the Division of Cognitive Neurology and heads the Memory Disorders Research Center at Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center.
Often physicians may not recognize subtle cognitive deficits during routine office visits, he said.
“What we found was that this SAGE self-administered test correlated very well with detailed cognitive testing,” Scharre said. “If we catch this cognitive change really early, then we can start potential treatments much earlier than without having this test.”
While the test does not diagnose problems like Alzheimer’s, it does allow doctors to get a baseline of cognitive function in their patients, so they can follow them for these problems over time.
“We can give them the test periodically and, the moment we notice any changes in their cognitive abilities, we can intervene much more rapidly,” Scharre said.
Follow this link for another excellent article about SAGE: http://life.nationalpost.com/2014/01/14/the-diy-dementia-test-sample-questions-from-the-quiz-doctors-claim-will-catch-alzheimers-early/