In this podcast, Panagiota Voskou, MSc, PhD, Senior Neurologist, General District Hospital of Chalkida; Doctor, Medical School of Athens, Athens, Greece, reviews her poster presented at MDS Virtual Congress 2021 titled “Differentiation of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) progression to Alzheimer Disease (AD) vs Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB): Is this possible neuropsychologically?”

Dr Voskou discusses neuropsychological features that could predict the progression of mild cognitive impairment to dementia with lewy bodies or Alzheimer disease. More studies are needed and ongoing in this area of research.

Read the Transcript:

Dr Voskou: Hello. My name is Panagiota Voskou. I am a Neurologist, Doctor (PhD) of Medical School of Athens and the Senior Neurologist of General Hospital of Chalkida.

I run the Memory Clinic department of the 1st and the 2^nd Departments of Neurology of Athens University.

Shown in this context, we studied the neuropsychological features that could predict the progression of MCI (mild cognitive impairment) to DLB (Dementia with lewy bodies) or AD (Alzheimer Disease).

We did that assessment in the PubMed database, and we found 17 relevant articles, and so you can study my abstract.

From this, we concluded that most studies present that some features -- for example, impairment in executive and visuospatial abilities are more impaired, when they're more impaired than MCI -- can predict the progression in DLB.

Whereas disorders in episodic and recognition memory may predict the evolution to Alzheimer disease. In contrast, there are some other studies that conclude that there's no neurocognitive characteristics that would predict the progression of MCI to either DLB or AD.

Whereas some other ones preclude the amnestic type of MCI could predict this progression to Alzheimer disease, whereas the non-amnestic type of MCI can predict its progression to DLB. At any case, there are a few relevant studies, and this field of study needs more focus, more specialized studies on this.

Since for now, the ideal method of predicting the progression to DLB or AD, and in general, any kind of dementia, still remains the combination of clinical findings, neurocognitive assessment, and neuroimaging. This is the ideal method for now. Of course, it may still be, but we need more studies on this field.

Finally, it's not about neuropsychological assessments, but it's also very useful and interesting. Some findings on encephalogram, as well in hippocampal volume in MRIs can predict the progression to various types of dementia.

Our goal now is to do the research part of the study, which is still on its beginning, because of few patients with DLB. This is our goal now, and we hope in the next congress to be able to present you the conclusions from our sample, from our patients, and to be finally ready to compare this with the review findings.

Of course, there will be more. We hope there will be more findings in the next year, so we'll have more research results from our clinics.