Functional abilities and cognitive decline in adult and aging intellectual disabilities. Psychometric validation of an Italian version of the Alzheimer's Functional Assessment Tool (AFAST): analysis of its clinical significance with linear statistics and artificial neural networks

Abstract

These results confirm the reliability and validity of AFAST-I and emphasise the complexity of the relationship among functional status, cognitive functioning and behaviour also in adults/seniors with ID.

Frontal Lobe Degeneration in Adults with Down Syndrome and Alzheimer's Disease: A Review

“…Two studies did not report the exact number of subjects showing signs of dementia or diagnosed with AD [35,46]. In one study [44], organizational problems resulted in 21% of the subjects going undiagnosed.…”

“…Of the 14 studies, only 2 focused on the cognitive assessment of individuals with DS and AD [20,36]. There were 11 studies in which the main focus was AD in DS [12,20,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43]; there was 1 study in which the central theme was functional aspects of AD in adults with intellectual disability [44], and there were 2 studies that focused on aging individuals with DS but not necessarily on aspects related to dementia [45,46]. Of the 11 studies focusing on AD in DS, 2 included only subjects diagnosed with DS and AD [12,37], whereas the others involved control groups of individuals without AD, without DS, or even without intellectual disabilities.…”

“…However, after detailed analysis of the articles, 3 were excluded: 1 was excluded because it was a postmortem analysis [32], and 2 were excluded because they did not address the diagnosis or signs of dementia [33,34], although 1 of those 2 did address the relationship between oxidative stress and a decline in memory [34]. Therefore, we reviewed 14 articles [12,20,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46], all of which are profiled in table 1. Although we would have included studies available in English, Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese, from the 14 studies, only 1 was in Spanish, the other ones were all in English.…”

“…In a study conducted by De Vreese et al [44], the focus was the validation of an instrument for the functional assessment of individuals with intellectual disabilities, with and without dementia. In the study conducted by Carr and Collins [36], the main objective was the longitudinal assessment of cognition in subjects with DS and AD.…”

Ageing in individuals with intellectual disability: issues and concerns in Hong Kong

“…7 In addition, by the age of 40 years, people with ID are more likely to develop dementia, as their cognition declines faster compared with their non-ID counterparts. 8,9 Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia with symptoms that are severe enough to cause serious health deterioration. Affected individuals become increasingly dependent on caregivers and have an increased likelihood of institutionalisation.…”