A New Test for Dementia: Walking

The Times reports on Tuesday morning on five new studies suggesting that changes in the way an older person walks may be among the earliest indicators of cognitive decline, including Alzheimer’s disease.

“Changes in walking may predate actually observable cognitive changes in people who are on their way to developing dementia,” said Molly Wagster, chief of the National Institute on Aging’s behavioral and systems neuroscience branch. Experts said the studies could lead to developing a relatively simple tool that doctors could use to forecast, if not diagnose, possible Alzheimer’s disease.

“You can probably just watch them walk down the hall in your office and look for people who are starting to show deterioration in their gait and have no other explanation for it,” said William Thies, the chief medical and scientific officer for the Alzheimer’s Association. “If gait begins to deteriorate, we begin to have a conversation about how is your memory.”

While scientists have studied gait changes after a heart attack or stroke and in diseases like Parkinson’s, they have only recently begun studying connections between walking and cognition. For decades, people thought slower walking was just part of getting old, but research shows some changes in gait signify problems that go beyond normal aging.

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