Alzheimer's disease is known to cause a deterioration in money management skills, but a new research report indicates that this symptom can strike disease sufferers earlier than was previously thought.
“There has been a misperception that financial difficulty may occur only in the late stages of dementia, but this can happen early, and the changes can be subtle,” said P. Murali Doraiswamy, senior author of the paper and a professor of psychiatry and geriatrics at Duke Health, an umbrella organization that includes Duke University School of Medicine. “The more we can understand adults’ financial decision-making capacity and how that may change with aging, the better we can inform society about those issues,” the researcher said in a news release.
The results of the clinical study, recently published in The Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease, found an association between declines in financial management skills and the buildup of protein deposits, also called amyloid plaques, in the brain. Such deposits are a notable symptom of Alzheimer's disease, but they can also be found in healthy people as they age.
The study, which involved 243 adults between 55 and 90 years old, found that financial skills declined at the earliest stages of mild memory impairment, and that the erosion of such skills can even show up in older adults who are cognitively healthy.
Similar results were found among both men and women, according to the release.
"After controlling for a person’s education and other demographics, the scientists found the more extensive the amyloid plaques were, the worse that person’s ability to understand and apply basic financial concepts or completing tasks such as calculating an account balance," the release stated.
In an interview with Financial Advisor magazine, Doraiswamy noted that the five stages of Alzheimer's play out over a period of more than two decades, starting with the "preclinical" stage—a period of a decade or more where sufferers have no outward symptoms of the disease, but are gradually deteriorating.
One of the significant findings of the study, he said, was the loss of financial abilities in this early stage. "Obviously, it's a lot more subtle," he said, noting that in the later stages of Alzheimer's, the loss of such abilities are significant and "markedly impairing in terms of decision-making."
The research paper noted that there are an estimated 45 million cases of Alzheimer's disease dementia worldwide and that the number is expected to triple in coming decades. While the loss of financial skills is known to be a symptom in advanced stages of the disease, "the lack of sensitive instruments … may have limited the full characterization of subtle financial capacity losses in the preclinical and prodromal stages of AD,” the researchers wrote.
Doraiswamy told Financial Advisor that financial advisors should be aware of a 20-minute "financial capacity" test developed for the study that could be used as a tool by doctors to test patients cognitive functionality over time.