Subjective cognitive decline: how useful is it as a predictive factor?

Specialists have reported new findings from a study of subjective cognitive decline (SCD) as a predictor of conversion to dementia in a racially and ethnically diverse population.

SCD – the perception of a decline in cognition before it is evident on standard neuropsychological tests – has been shown in previous research to be potentially useful as an early marker of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). However, these studies have largely focused on non-Hispanic white populations.

To investigate the utility of SCD in black and Hispanic subjects, as well as in non-Hispanic white subjects, researchers from Columbia University Medical Center, New York, USA, studied a racially and ethnically diverse population of 5,379 older adults enrolled in a longitudinal study of aging.