Vestibular tests: early predictors of Alzheimer’s disease

Background and Aim : Recent studies have reported the connections between vestibular function and the cognition and also reported more prevalence of vestibular impairment in patients with Alzheimer s disease. Because patients with mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) are more likely to develop Alzheimer s disease, this study was conducted to evaluate vestibular dysfunction of otolith organs in aMCI patients compared to normal subjects.Methods : Nineteen patients with aMCI with mean age of 62/22± 10/75 years and 20 normal participants with mean age of 56/25 ± 7/97 years were evaluated for ocular and cervical vestibular evoked myogenic potentials (o- and cVEMP) . Occurrence of VEMP responses, amplitude, latency and threshold of these waves were recorded and compared between the two groups.Results : Ocular VEMP was absent in 60/52% of aMCI patients which was significantly higher than normal group (30 %) (p = 0.007), while occurrence rate, amplitude, latencies and threshold of cVEMP were not significantly different between the two groups (p <0.05). There was no significant relationship between occurrences of two potentials in aMCI group.Conclusion : These findings show the presence of vestibular dysfunction, especially in the pathways of ocular vestibular evoked potential, in patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment. Given that previous studies have shown that cVEMP was absent in Alzheimer s disease, absence of oVEMP can be used as an indicator for predicting future impairment in individuals with amnestic MCI.

کلیدواژه ها:

Ocular vestibular evoked myogenic potential ، Cervical vestibular evoked myogenic potential ، vestibular system ، cognition ، mild cognitive impairment