Can β-Amyloid Deposition, Hippocampal Atrophy, and Small Vessel Disease Predict Dementia?

The degenerative process that underlies Alzheimer disease (AD) begins several years before symptoms appear. Biomarkers such as beta-amyloid deposition, hippocampal atrophy, and white-matter lesions (WMLs) are predictors of AD or mild cognitive impairment in initially cognitively normal individuals. To examine how these markers relate to one another and to dementia onset, researchers evaluated 183 participants in the larger Ginkgo Evaluation of Memory study.

At baseline, 146 of the 183 patients (mean age, 85.5 years) were cognitively normal (CN) and 37 had mild cognitive impairment (MCI); 139 (76%) were C-labeled Pittsburgh compound B–positive (PIB positive), had small hippocampal volume, or had WMLs. At baseline, 51% of the CN participants a…