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Methods for identifying individuals in the preclinical stages of Alzheimer disease (AD) will be important in investigations and eventual clinical use of disease-modifying therapies. In this study, researchers evaluated whether rates of change in ventricle volume, assessed by serial MRI, would predict onset of cognitive impairment in 79 healthy, nondemented older adults (mean age, 83.5). For up to 15 years, patients underwent annual brain MRI and biannual standardized clinical examinations.
As a group, the 37 participants who developed mild cognitive impairment — operationally defined in this study as two consecutive clinical dementia rating scale scores of ≥0.5 without functional decline — exhibited a faster rate of ventricle expansion than …