This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on ISI (20)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Topic Collections  • Alzheimer Disease  • Behavioral Neurology  • Cognitive Disorders  • Alert me on articles by topic

Margaret M. Swanberg, DO; Rochelle E. Tractenberg, PhD, MPH; Richard Mohs, PhD; Leon J. Thal, MD; Jeffrey L. Cummings, MD

Arch Neurol. 2004;61:556-560.

Background  Executive dysfunction (EDF) is common in Alzheimer disease (AD); however, its relationship to other symptoms is difficult to assess in patients with AD.

Objectives  To determine the prevalence of EDF and study its relationship to cognitive, functional, and neuropsychiatric symptoms in patients with AD.

Design, Setting, and Patients  A retrospective analysis of data from participants in the English Instruments Protocol of the Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study. Subjects were drawn from a sample of patients evaluated at tertiary referral centers.

Results  A total of 64% of AD patients were classified as having EDF. Patients with EDF performed worse on tests of cognition (P <.001), dementia severity (P <.001), and activities of daily living (P = .01) and had more frequent symptoms of psychosis (P = .03) with greater emergence during the 12-month interval (P = .03) compared with patients with normal executive function. Less than 30% of the variance in executive function performance was explained by cognitive measures.

Conclusion  These findings support the assessment of executive function in persons with AD and the importance of frontal lobe dysfunction in AD.

From the Departments of Neurology (Drs Swanberg and Cummings) and Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences (Dr Cummings), David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, Calif; Department of Biomathematics and Biostatistics, Georgetown University School of Medicine, Washington, DC (Dr Tractenberg); Department of Neurosciences, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla (Dr Thal); and Neuroscience Medical Division, Eli Lilly & Company, Indianapolis, Ind (Drs Mohs and Thal).

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

A Neuropsychological Test Battery for Use in Alzheimer Disease Clinical Trials
Harrison et al.
Arch Neurol 2007;64:1323-1329.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Activities of daily living in frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer disease
Mioshi et al.
Neurology 2007;68:2077-2084.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT