Stages of Alzheimer’s disease
1) Pre-dementia
This stage is the prodromal or the preclinical stage of Alzheimer’s disease. It is a transition stage between the effect of aging and the dementia of Alzheimer’s. The most prominent features of this stage are problems in short memory, such as forgetting the recently learned information and difficulty in learning new information. The patient may be unaware of these early problems in memory.
Apathy may begin during this stage and persists through the course of the disease. Also, depression and irritability are common in this stage.
Problems in thinking, planning, and reasoning are usually asymptomatic in this stage.
This stage is also called mild cognitive impairment, which may occur with a lot of symptoms. When the memory problems are the predominant symptoms, it is called amnestic mild cognitive impairment, and it is usually a prodromal stage for Alzheimer’s.
The neuropsychiatric examination may reveal mild cognitive impairment even before the patient fulfills the diagnostic criteria of Alzheimer’s by years.
