Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders Annual 5

The relationship of neuropathologic changes to the clinical status of people with dementia is of paramount importance in devising appropriate therapeutic interventions. Despite the fact that a central feature of the diagnostic criteria for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) includes a history of insidious onset and a progression of cognitive decline, it was not until the mid 1990s, as large-scale memory clinics obtained increased experience with people presenting early with symptoms of mild dementia, that attention was directed at understanding the processes occurring during the prodromal stages of dementia. Subsequently, individuals with mild memory loss, who were clinically followed as their cognition deteriorated through stages of mild, moderate, and severe AD, were neuropathologically confirmed postmortem as AD.