A new assessment of Activities of Daily Living has been developed specifically for use with people with dementia. The assessment is a carer rated instrument consisting of 20 daily-living abilities. The scale has 'face validity', assessing items rated as important by and using levels of ability generated by carers. It has 'construct' validity as demonstrated by principal components analysis. It has 'concurrent' validity in that it correlates well with observed task performance. It has good 'test-retest' reliability as measured by Cohen's Kappa and it correlates well with the Mini-Mental State Examination. Carers report that it is easy to use and it is relatively short. The authors believe the scale will be useful when assessing demented patients in the community or as part of clinical research trials.

The effects of a single oral dose of the acetylcholinesterase inhibitor velnacrine maleate on word and object recognition memory and regional uptake of 99mTc-exametazime were examined in patients with Alzheimer's disease. Word recognition memory was marginally improved 2 h after 75 mg velnacrine. With the same dose of velnacrine a relative increase in superior frontal uptake of 99mTc-exametazime was shown with single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT). This suggests increased regional perfusion and metabolism as a consequence of cholinergic stimulation. The effect did not co-vary with the degree of memory improvement, but, instead, more cognitively impaired patients showed a greater increase in tracer uptake after velnacrine, suggesting cholinergic hypersensitivity in the brains of Alzheimer patients.

Scopolamine produces a satisfactory model of the attentional and secondary memory deficits seen in Alzheimer's disease (AD) that can be used to screen compounds for potential therapeutic usefulness. Physostigmine, which is known to enhance memory in AD, produced marked and widespread antagonism of the scopolamine-induced impairments, indicating the sensitivity of the model and establishing its relevance for the clinical situation. HP 029, a novel anticholinesterase, also exhibited widespread potency in the model, and in an international trial with patients with AD, it subsequently showed improvement on similar measures, demonstrating the predictive use of the scopolamine model.

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