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Related Experiment Videos

The reversible dementias: do they reverse?

A M Clarfield1

  • 1Sir Mortimer B. Davis Jewish General Hospital, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec.

Annals of Internal Medicine
|September 15, 1988
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

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Geriatric medicine.

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This review of dementia causes found Alzheimer's disease is most common. Potentially reversible causes, like drugs and depression, represent a small but treatable fraction of dementia cases.

Area of Science:

  • Gerontology
  • Neurology
  • Psychiatry

Background:

  • Dementia prevalence studies often focus on older adults, but the mean age in reviewed studies was 72.3 years.
  • Most studies originated from specialized medical centers rather than community settings.
  • Alzheimer's disease and multi-infarct dementia were the most prevalent forms identified.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To critically review the prevalence of dementia causes.
  • To assess the potential and actual reversibility of dementia.
  • To identify research gaps and inform clinical practice for dementia workup.

Main Methods:

  • Systematic review of 32 studies involving 2889 subjects.
  • Analysis of dementia etiologies, focusing on prevalence and reversibility.

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  • Evaluation of study biases and follow-up data on reversible causes.

    • Main Results:

    • Alzheimer's disease (56.8%) and multi-infarct dementia (13.3%) were the leading causes.
    • Potentially reversible causes accounted for 13.2% of cases, primarily drugs (28.2%), depression (26.2%), and metabolic factors (15.5%).
    • In studies with follow-up, 11% of dementias resolved, but this was not consistently examined.

    Conclusions:

    • While Alzheimer's disease dominates, a notable percentage of dementias stem from potentially reversible conditions.
    • The true incidence of reversible dementias may be lower than reported due to study biases.
    • A conservative approach to dementia diagnosis and management is recommended, considering treatable causes.