Regular Research ArticlesDecreased Daytime Motor Activity Associated With Apathy in Alzheimer Disease: An Actigraphic Study
Section snippets
Sample
One hundred seven individuals with an AD diagnosis were recruited in two centers: 80 participants at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Nice Memory Center and 27 participants at the Stanford/Veterans Affairs National Institute on Aging Alzheimer's Disease Core Center. An AD diagnosis was determined using the NINCDS-ADRDA criteria.21 Patients were not included if they had a history of head trauma with loss of consciousness, psychotic or major depressive disorder, or aberrant motor activity
RESULTS
A total of 11 subjects were excluded because they had NPI subscores greater than four (except for the NPI apathy subscore), five other subjects were excluded because of technical problems with their actigraph, and five more subjects were excluded because the number of recorded actigraphic 24-hour periods was less than three. Characteristics of the 107 AD participants (including participants both with and without apathy) and their actigraphic data are presented in Table 1. Participants in the
DISCUSSION
In the present study, individuals with AD and apathy had significantly lower mean motor activity during the daytime than those without apathy. This result is in agreement with previous studies17,20 and suggests that apathy measurement using actigraphic measurement of daytime mean motor activity is a simple and objective method of discriminating apathy. In our study, apathy was also correlated with the number and duration of naps, as suggested in Muller's study, such that those with apathy had
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Cited by (0)
This study was supported by a grant from the Conseil Général des Alpes Maritimes (Alzheimer's disease 06 Plan 2008–2012) and the Sierra-Pacific Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center (MIRECC), and the Medical Research Service of the Department of Veterans Affairs.