There are many symptoms besides memory loss—”and we don’t have the luxury of ignoring them,” expert says.
On Sept. 23, Edward “Ted” Huey, MD, joined some of the nation’s leading experts on Alzheimer’s disease at the National Institute on Aging to help set research priorities and to present his work. Huey’s main message: Memory loss is not the only sign of this common and devastating disease.
Ted Huey, MD
Alzheimer’s and related dementias also cause motor symptoms, like hand tremors or weakness. And there can be neuropsychiatric symptoms: angry outbursts, sudden apathy, even visual hallucinations. Loss of appetite and weight loss and trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep are also common signs of Alzheimer’s and other common forms of dementia, which afflict more than 6 million people in the United States—including 40 percent of people over the age of 85, according to federal statistics.
“Alzheimer’s and other dementias are not just diseases that affect memory,” said Huey, the associate director for Brown’s Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research. “There are a host of other symptoms, and we don’t have the luxury of ignoring them.”
Huey is the Martin M. Zucker Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior in Brown’s Division of Biology and Medicine and sees dementia patients at Butler Hospital, where he leads the Memory and Aging Program.
Huey has committed his career as a physician and scientist to understanding the surprisingly huge swath of signs and symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. This process is called phenotyping, an art and science that is critical for proper diagnosis and treatment. If doctors miss the signs, they miss the diagnosis. Or they can make the wrong diagnosis and prescribe the wrong drugs. Either way, patients and their caregivers suffer.
