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Updated: Jun 5, 2025

The 4 Mountains Test: A Short Test of Spatial Memory with High Sensitivity for the Diagnosis of Pre-dementia Alzheimer's Disease
Published on: October 13, 2016
Distinct medical and substance use histories associate with cognitive decline in Alzheimer's Disease
Clayton Mansel1, Diego R Mazzotti2, Ryan Townley3
1Department of Cell Biology and Physiology, University of Kansas Medical Center, 3901 Rainbow Blvd, Kansas City, KS, 66160.
Introduction:
Phenotype clustering reduces patient heterogeneity and could be useful when designing precision clinical trials. We hypothesized that the onset of early cognitive decline in patients would exhibit variance predicated on the clinical history documented prior to an Alzheimer's Disease (AD) diagnosis.
Methods:
Self-reported medical and substance use history (i.e., problem history) was used to cluster participants from the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Centers (NACC) into distinct subtypes. Linear mixed effects modeling was used to determine the effect of problem history subtype on cognitive decline over two years.
Results:
2754 individuals were partitioned into three subtypes: minimal (n = 1380), substance use (n = 1038), and cardiovascular (n = 336) subtypes. The cardiovascular problem history subtype had significantly worse cognitive decline over a two-year follow-up period (p = 0.013).
Discussion:
Our study highlights the need to account for problem history to reduce heterogeneity of outcomes in AD clinical trials.
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