Prevalence and correlates of anxiety in Alzheimer’s Disease

ERÁN CHEMERINSKY; GUSTAVO PETRACCA; FACUNDO MANES; LILIANA SABE; SERGIO STARKSTEIN

Amsterdam

Conferencia; 6th International Conference on Alzheimer´s Disease and Related Disorders; 1998

World Federation of Neurology, National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Aging

We assessed a consecutive series of 398 patients with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD) for the presence of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) using a standardized neuropsychiatric evaluation. Five percent of patients showed GAD during the 4 weeks preceding the psychiatric evaluation. AD patients with GAD showed significantly higher scores of depression, irritability, overt aggression, mania, and pathological crying than AD patients without GAD. The most severe symptoms of anxiety were those of tension, fears, insomnia, and physical complaints.