Geda YE, Roberts RO, Knopman DS et al.
Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA.
Arch Gen Psychiatry 2008;65:1193–8.
[2] Social participation in home-living patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease.
Sørensen LV, Waldorff FB, Waldemar G.
Copenhagen University Hospital, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Arch Gerontol Geriatr 2008;47:291–301.
Editor’s note: These two articles, one from the US [1] and the other from Denmark [2], concern the effect of early-stage dementia or mild cognitive impairment (MCI) on social functioning. Geda et al. compared 319 elderly individuals with MCI with 1590 comparable individuals with normal cognition [1]. They found significantly higher rates of apathy (odds ratio [OR] 4.53, 95% confidence interval [CI] 3.11–6.60; p<0.001), agitation (OR 3.60, 95% CI 2.18–5.92; p<0.001), anxiety (OR 3.00, 95% CI 2.01–4.48; p<0.001), irritability (OR 2.99, 95% CI 2.11–4.22; p<0.001), and depression (OR 2.78, 95% CI 2.06–3.76; p<0.001) in the MCI group. The study by Sørensen et al. investigated social participation in 330 patients who lived at home and were suffering from mild Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and determined that mild AD was associated with social impairment [2]. Independent predictors of low social participation included low Activities of Daily Living questionnaire score, and neuropsychiatric symptoms.