Keeping Life Normal With Alzheimer's

Keeping Life Normal With Alzheimer's Aug. 13, 2001 -- Bathing, using the toilet, dressing, grooming -- these are daily routines most adults take for granted but that people with Alzheimer's disease gradually lose the ability to perform.

Now, a drug already shown to improve memory and language skills appears also to prolong ability to perform those vital tasks, according to two new reports in the journal Neurology. The effects of the drug Aricept last as long as a year or more, according to researchers.

Alzheimer's disease is an incurable, brain disease affecting nearly four million Americans.

Richard Mohs, PhD, author of one of the studies, says preserving ability to perform "activities of daily living" is important because what really matters to people with Alzheimer's and their families is living as normal a life as possible -- for as long as possible.

"Our study shifts the emphasis away from looking at [short-term] improvement in memory and language to an emphasis on the preservation of functions that the patient came into treatment with," Mohs tells WebMD. "What it shows is that patients treated with [Aricept] are much less likely to experience a significant loss of function over a period of at least a year."

That's crucial because if patients begin treatment early when they still have the ability to perform at a relatively high level of functioning, the drug may help them preserve that ability.

"One of the things we have learned about this disease is that once a patient has lost some functional ability, it is very rare for that function to come back," says Mohs, associate chief of staff for research at the Bronx VA Medical Center and professor at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, New York.

In Mohs' study, 431 patients with Alzheimer's received either Aricept or an identical-looking placebo pill and were followed for up to 54 weeks.

Beginning at week six, people with Alzheimer's and their caregivers were asked how well the patients were able to perform the following basic daily activities: going to the bathroom, eating, dressing, grooming and personal hygiene, bathing, and walking. The caregivers were also asked to judge how well the patients were able to do such things as using the telephone, managing money, and shopping.