Prevalence of Dementia altered with age and education in an elderly population of Varanasi

A later age at onset of Alzheimer's disease (AD) was found to be related to diminished semantic memory performance in fifteen mildly demented (Aged 62-72yrs, mean = 68.40yrs, SD = 3.68) and ten moderately demented patients (Aged 65-80yrs., mean = 69.50, SD = 4.28yrs.) screened on the basis of HMMSE, HMDRS, HWMS and on the NINCDS-ADRDA criteria (McKhann et al. 1984). 80 Pictures were used in this study which is belonging to 8 semantic categories. Three types of test materials were generated from these stimuli. Subjects were tested individually for Word Picture Matching Mixed Categories (WPM-MC), Word Picture Matching Same Categories (WPM-SC) and Picture Naming (PN). The finding of study indicated that the onset of dementia was related to the advancing years of age and moderately demented patient have performed less on all three subtask than mildly demented and control subjects. These finding extend the hypothesis that with an advancing age there is gradual decline in cognitive capabilities of demented patients. The result of this study have also showed that only few years of schooling does not exert any remarkable and noticeable effect on the cognitive domain of aged subjects.