Questionnaire It’s easy to rely on doctors and science to tell if anything’s wrong, but on occasion, your family and friends know better. According to research from the Washington University School of Medicine, US, standard tests used to check cognitive ability – often the first skill to suffer with early-onset Alzheimer’s – are not as effective at picking up problems as a simple questionnaire that is given to family or friends to complete.
The researchers created the questionnaire – called the two-minute Ascertain Dementia 8 (AD8) – so that doctors would be able to evaluate an individual’s abilities without having to rely on the person’s responses. Traditional tests include things such as trying to memorise and then recall a list of words, or simple tasks such as comparing shapes or objects. The questionnaire, however, focuses on a person’s ability to perform everyday activities. Presumably because someone else other than the patient is answering the questions, they are more able to be objective – a person who is suffering with Alzheimer’s may not want to admit they are having problems.
When the researchers assessed data of each individual’s biomarkers for Alzheimer’s (specific biological indicators of the disease such as plaques seen during a brain scan, for example) and linked this information with both the standard tests and the questionnaire, they found the questionnaire was more often accurate in predicting Alzheimer’s biomarkers.