Neuropsychiatric and Behavioral Symptoms in a Community Sample of Hispanics With Alzheimer's Disease

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to characterize and compare neuropsychiatric symptoms in a sample of 367 community-dwelling subjects: 70 Hispanics and 230 non-Hispanic white patients with Alzheimer's disease, and 22 Hispanics and 45 non-Hispanic white healthy age-matched controls. Neuropsychiatric symptoms were common among all patients with Alzheimer's disease. In the Alzheimer's disease groups, Hispanic subjects presented to the initial assessment with more symptoms than non-Hispanic white subjects did. In comparison to the non-Hispanic white population, the proportion of Hispanics with neuropsychiatric and behavioral symptoms was higher. These findings have implications for differential sociocultural presentations of Alzheimer's disease among ethnic/racial groups.

Non-cognitive psychopathological symptoms associated with incident mild cognitive impairment and dementia, alzheimer’s type

“…This author has pointed out that "the major disintegration of psychological organisation which is characteristic of dementia is likely to involve other systems such as perception, motility, personality organisation, emotional experience and volition". Non-cognitive psychopathological symptoms, which have been called "behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia" (BPSD) (Finkel et al, 1997), have lately stirred considerable interest: they are common both in clinical samples (Ortiz et al, 2006) and in the general population (Lyketsos et al, 2002); and they are considered to predict a poorer outcome (Chan et al, 2003;Shin et al, 2005). We have recently shown that affective symptoms, and particularly negative-type symptoms are very frequent in cases of dementia living in the community, the latter having powerful specificity in the distinction with non-cases (Saz et al, 2008).…”

Neuropsychiatric symptoms are associated with disability in cognitively impaired Latino elderly with and without dementia: results from the Sacramento Area Latino study on Aging

“…Latinos with dementia (Hinton et al, 2003;Sink et al, 2004;Ortiz et al, 2006) and those who are cognitively impaired but not demented (Hinton et al, 2003) have higher rates of neuropsychiatric symptoms compared to white non-Hispanics, yet how these symptoms impact the functioning of older Latinos is not known. Understanding the factors that generate disability in cognitively impaired older Latinos, a large and growing segment of the US elderly population, is important to clarify disparities in the 'burden' of dementia among older Latinos and to improve care.…”

Effectiveness and Safety of Donepezil in Hispanic Patients with Alzheimer’s Disease: A 12-Week Open-Label Study

“…Spanish versions of the FOME,37 MMSE8 and NPI38 have been validated in U.S. Hispanic populations. The SDMT itself does not require translation, but the instructions were provided in Spanish via certified translation.…”

“…Importantly, recent studies have shown that Hispanics tend to manifest more psychiatric symptoms than whites 37. A meta-analysis of the efficacy of cholinesterase inhibitors in the treatment of psychiatric symptoms in patients with AD showed that these compounds had a modest beneficial effect,42 suggesting that cholinesterase inhibition improves not only cognition but also behavioral symptoms in mild-to-moderate AD.…”