Effectiveness of a specific nutritional supplement on cognitive, behavioral and functional symptoms in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s dementia: caregivers judgments. Results of an observational survey
Abstract
Background and aims. Caregivers play a central role in the evaluation of symptoms in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia, and in clinical practice their opinion is important in the definition of the effectiveness of pharmacological and not pharmacological intervention.
With the aim to explore the impact of a nutritional intervention by the use of a medical food on quality of life,
cognitive and functional outcomes in large populations of Alzheimer’s dementia (AD) and MCI subjects, we
performed an observational survey (the MEMENTO study).
Methods. The study was carried out in 30 Italian outpatients clinics, based on patient and caregiver judgment.
Results. Five hundred patients (58.8% female, mean age 75.9 ± 7.1 SD) were included in the survey. The
results confirmed the data from RCT about the effectiveness of dietary supplementation with a medical food
on cognitive symptoms of AD and MCI and also the effectiveness on behavioral and functional deficits. In particular, the effectiveness was more evident in patients with higher MMSE score, and in MCI compared to AD.
Interestingly, caregivers of MCI subjects reported better results than those of AD patients only in cognitive and
functional domains but not in behavioral domain.
Conclusions. The study uses for the first time the subjective judgment of patients and caregivers as an outcome
measure, by focusing on the cognitive aspects, and on functional status and behavior.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Copyright
© Società Italiana di Gerontologia e Geriatria (SIGG) , 2018
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